


Swansong

by magistralucis (Solitary_Shadow)



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF, Kavinsky (Musician)
Genre: 1980s-1990s Yugoslavian Politics, AU, Asexual!Sebastian, Bittersweet, Character Death, Coming of Age, Food Porn, Freudian Psychology, High School AU, Literary References, M/M, Magical Realism, Philosophy, Separation Anxiety, Slash, Slow Build, Unresolved Sexual Tension, introspective
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-06-01 12:25:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 52,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6519241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solitary_Shadow/pseuds/magistralucis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Please trust me, my dearest Sebastian, one more time.</i>
</p><p>No human being can stand to feel too much, though many also work very hard at feeling too little.<br/>Sebastian Akchoté is one of those people. It's going to take more than a night call to fix that.</p><p>[Sebastian/Kavinsky, mixed AU between Kavinsky's fictional universe and the real world. Read all warnings.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Der Mondabend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Disclaimer: I do not know anyone mentioned in this story personally, this is strictly a work of fiction and I do not profit from nor claim to represent true aspects of their lives in this story.**
> 
> I'm back in the writing game again. I begin with two men who, in a way, began all over again as well. This is the first Kavinsky or Sebastian fic I've written, and also the first time I've written about them, full stop. I keep feeling obliged to represent them as truthfully as I can make them, despite Kavinsky's universe being an essentially fictional one - I'm attempting to reconcile this through a strange hyperrealism mingled with the clearly impossible.
> 
> This is the first time I have been able to write so faithfully about _myself_. I hope this is not a flaw.

**Swansong (Chapter 01) - ' _Der Mondabend_ '**

\-----

The first streetlight of the evening buzzed into life as the man left his car, shutting the door behind him with a noise that cut sharply through the silence. From there it was a mere ten steps until he reached the front door; keys were tossed into a small chrome dish that sat atop the small table by the entrance; he took off his shoes neatly, right foot first then the left as he had always done, and left them settled by the side. He was carrying a backpack over his shoulder, holding onto a single strap, and by this point it was becoming too heavy for him to hold so he put it down by his feet as a temporary measure while he fumbled for the light switch and turned it on.

Everything was exactly where he had left it three weeks ago. The house was as cold as ice, but he could fix that.  
His lips might have moved for a moment, but he thought better of it. No one was there to answer anyway.

He was about to pick up his bag and take a proper seat somewhere when the phone rang. He still had a phone with a corded receiver, set up on a little table on its own in the traditional style; this arrangement necessitated that he had to abandon everything he was doing if he wanted to answer it, and this was often his excuse for ignoring what few calls he tended to receive, but this time was different. There could only be one person who would call him at this hour. The man walked over, picked up the phone, answered in his usual clipped, laconic way. "Sebastian Akchoté."

"It's Pedro. You got home all right?" the voice down the line was clear and jovial. A smile might have twitched Sebastian's mouth for a moment as he recognized his manager's voice, but then it was gone.

"I've just arrived."

"Looking forward to your break now?"

"I needed it."

Pedro laughed at the other end, and a faint creak was immediately audible as he leaned back on a chair. From the sound alone Sebastian figured that he was back in his office; seeing as it was past nine in the evening, he could not possibly be there for reasons other than his own satisfaction. Pedro was in love with his work in a way more literal than most people appreciated - but frankly, Sebastian in turn wouldn't have wanted any other type of character as his manager, and they both knew it. "Glad to hear that. See, the weather report's just ended. There's a storm headed your way, apparently, it's going to be a big one. I wanted to check whether you were still stuck in traffic or safe back home," upon hearing this, Sebastian gave a little nod, appreciating the concern even if the other man couldn't see him. "but I've called at such a godforsaken hour that you _know_ that's not the only thing I wanted to ask. Are you okay to talk, or do you want me to shut up and call back tomorrow? You must be exhausted."

Sebastian smirked. No one knew him better when it came to matters of work.  
Pedro Winter was a mere three years his senior, but had been in this business for much longer - over half a decade, in fact, and he had many talents under his management to prove his expertise. The younger man had started out in the music scene with no contacts to speak of, but he had been immensely fortunate in that _Pedro_ had been the one to recognize his abilities. When they conducted business, it was done in an essentially _honest_ way that no other label manager would have been able to replicate for Sebastian's sake. He appreciated that. "What was it that you really called me for?"

"Are you happy about where and when your next shows are scheduled?"

"Yes."

"Would you be unhappy about adding another?"

"At where?"

There was a rustling noise, and a rapid flicking of pages followed. "Let's see... ah, here we are. Just as I thought, at Los Angeles. Detour Festival, you know the one Gaspard and Xavier are headlining? They'd like to see some more of the Ed Banger crew in the meantime. All of us who can make it are going, that's me and Bertrand and Mehdi so far..."

_At Los Angeles?_

"We've still got over a month to decide, but obviously the faster they can hear from us..."

Words were being spoken, but he suddenly couldn't understand them. Sebastian blinked rapidly and tried to concentrate, though he felt that information was being thrown to him so rapidly that he couldn't focus. When Pedro asked him what he thought of the idea, he was still mulling over the part where the older man had said that most of their friends were going.

"... Seb?"

His words temporarily lost their reason.

_"... Oui?"_

Pedro inhaled sharply from the other end. This was a bad sign. He and Sebastian were both of French origin - _most_ people in Ed Banger were, it was one of the things they bonded over - but Sebastian hardly ever spoke the language unless he was _struggling_ in some manner or another. "What's wrong?"

"... Nothing, it's just

( _I don't understand why you're doing this to me_ )

a bit sudden

( _let's go home_ )

to hear, that's all. I'm not convinced, Pedro."

Coming from Sebastian, that was as good as a no. Add in the slip from earlier, and it ought to have been obvious, just how _uneasy_ this conversation had made him all of a sudden. But his manager wasn't the type to give up so easily. "They mentioned you by name several times, they definitely want to see you there. Enough that they'd pay double. And I don't blame them! I love my Justice boys, don't get me wrong, but it's hardly an exaggeration to say that you're leading the Ed Banger sound at the moment. LA's pretty close to home for you, too, no? It'd be nice."

Pedro had pointed Sebastian towards other shows before, most of them in places the young DJ was _wonderfully_ received in. But he still hadn't played in all that many festivals, so Pedro probably thought that he was just nervous or something like that. But _home_ had been the wrong word to use and here was what he didn't quite understand: Los Angeles had only been Sebastian's home in the sense that he'd once _lived_ there. It'd been during his teenage years too, a turbulent time to say the least. That period of his life was not one that he cared to remember. He didn't have enough attachment to the city to justify going back, and not only that, he had no interest in giving the place another chance.

The reason for _that_ was none of Pedro's business, nor anyone else's, and he would keep it that way. The resolve sharpened his mind again.

"You know I don't do this for the money," Sebastian answered dryly, glancing towards the window. No one was outside, but he felt that he'd been standing here for too long with the curtains open and the lights on - the idea of being watched in his own home made him feel uncomfortable. He might as well end the conversation here; he wasn't getting anything out of it, and he had other things to do. Doing what his manager asked was usually a good career move, but for this one thing, his mind was made up. "perhaps I will think about it, but for now I'm leaning towards no. Have a good night."

"Sebastian, _mon ami,_ you know you can talk to me if something's worrying you. Please-"

"Please _what?_ " the man shot back, pausing halfway in removing his jacket. He resumed it seconds later when a concerned silence filled the line (not that he recognized the concern) and had tossed the jacket upon a nearby armchair when Pedro spoke up once more with a resigned sigh.

"... Nothing. Rest up. Call me if you have any second thoughts, all right?"

"Mm."

Pedro hung up without another word. Only then did Sebastian wonder, vaguely, whether he'd hurt his manager's feelings, but he couldn't bring himself to care too much about it. He'd long given up on himself as someone who could make a difference on emotional fronts.

He placed the phone down onto its cradle and moved to the side so that he could close the curtains over the window. The soft heavy material fell across the glass as he tugged at the ends, but there was that one _tiny_ bit in the middle that just wouldn't close properly. It was always like that. He exhaled with impatience, and tried again, pulling one half of the curtains back and attempting to ease it back into the required position. At least, that was all he intended to do until he realized that he should have checked _beforehand_ that nothing was amiss outside. Time spent away had misordered his usual habits.

Sebastian paused with the curtain bunched in his hand. His reflection caught his eye first and he frowned at it.  
He was a pale-faced man with dark hair, fairly tall and broad-shouldered in stature, his expression perpetually of the neutral kind. His eyes appeared anything from a piercing slate-blue to near black in different kinds of light, and if pressed, he would have mentioned them as the feature he liked most about himself. He was a musician - some called him an _artist_ \- and dominant opinion was that his simple but striking appearance complimented his job well, but he had no real response to that. He sought to be the kind of person who had to be _experienced_ if one wanted to gain access to his charms, preferring to be in the company of those who were genuinely interested in him, even if he didn't always know how to treat said company very well. Sebastian was far from abrasive, but even those who were closest to him believed that he resided in a different plane of thought altogether.

He might have wanted to amend that perception once upon a time, but nowadays he just considered it a part of his essential character. Over three decades of being this way had to count for something. He looked wordlessly ahead for a few more seconds until he tired of contemplating his reflection, and only then did he move his gaze past the window glass to what lay beyond it.

From where he was standing, he could see the road stretching past his view, an old phone box on the pavement opposite his side of the street, and the pale white silhouette of two houses behind that. (He did not know those particular neighbours at all.) There were more streetlights spaced along that road but right now he could only see the one, and he would have to go upstairs to see its light clearly at all. No one was out and about at this hour; he lived in an exceptionally quiet neighbourhood, and when he'd first moved in he had wondered if the requirements of his profession would be a problem in a place such as this. But those fears had been unfounded. He would never have imagined it when he was first starting out as a teenager, but he now lived in an era where music was simply easier to make, and with greater privacy, than ever before; some of his friends lived in bustling cities and made music in their apartments without any soundproofing whatsoever, and the very possibility of it amazed him even now.

Sebastian smiled. That was something _old-fashioned_ about him that he didn't mind acknowledging.

The point was: he made music freely where he lived, and while it surprised him to know it, no one minded. In fact, he doubted that the people who lived in this area concerned themselves with their neighbours' affairs at all. His neighbours likely had no idea that he was famous elsewhere, and he preferred it that way. There was always a time and place when it came to being noticed.

He leaned in closer and glanced to the side, wondering if he could get a glimpse of something else. Nothing but the expanse of leaf-strewn lawns and barren darkness greeted him, so he drew back from the sight, contenting himself with one final look around his surroundings before he let the curtain drop. His watch ticked half nine at this point - too early for bed, too late for deeper thoughts. Sebastian retrieved his bag from the side as he'd intended to do much earlier and took it to the sofa, pulling out his laptop and setting it up on a nearby cushion. He'd allow himself two hours to check his email and try to get a little work done, though he hadn't the urge to do anything _serious_. Tonight was a night for distracted solitude. While his laptop ran and installed several updates he moved briefly to the other side of the room, searching for something to listen to in the meantime.

A dark-grey cover caught his eye. Charlotte Gainsbourg. He put the CD into the stereo and pressed play, remaining knelt down on the ground as he waited to give his verdict.

_"A cinq heures cinquante-cinq, ante meridiem;  
Too late to end it now, too early to start again..."_

Not that one. She was too sweet for his mood tonight. Sebastian stopped the music and ejected the CD before looking for another. His search was unfruitful, and so he gathered them up, tidied them back in their respective places, and returned to his laptop to try his luck again. The first album that caught his eye after a random scroll was one by Sébastien Tellier, a mentor, incidental sharer of names and close friend; _he_ might be able to help Sebastian out.

 _"Dis-moi ce que tu penses, de ma vie,_  
_de mon adolescence!_  
_Dis-moi ce que tu penses, j'aime aussi_  
_l'amour et la violence..."_

He shook his head. Sebastian had an odd habit of listening to this particular album through a reversed playlist; everything about _Sexuality_ made sense to him except for the order of the songs, but there was no way he could explain that to Sébastien himself or their mutual friend who had helped to produce the album, and so he just made it a secret ritual of his own. But if this track - the first one, in _his_ preferred order - wasn't doing it for him, none of them would. Sebastien's songs were too dreamlike and a little too sensual for his liking right now. After a few more minutes of searching he finally settled on a Brandenburg Concerto, glad for its wordlessness; by this point his fingers had developed a visible tremor to them that he could no longer ignore, so now was the time to go and take care of that.

Sebastian went to his kitchen and turned on the light. The first cabinet he opened yielded what he was looking for, and as he pulled out a pack of Marlboro he took a quick glance at the rest of the cabinet's contents as an afterthought - he'd need some more flour and salt when he went shopping in the morning, and while he was at it he'd have to think long and hard about whether he could do without brown sugar for the rest of that week. As he turned the light off again, he tore open the cigarette pack, prying the lid off _completely_ as was his habit when he was home.

He sat down at the table. He was on one side, an empty chair on the other, and there was an ashtray in between.  
People thought it odd that he didn't have it in the living room or anywhere other than the kitchen table, and he himself didn't quite understand why this arrangement made sense to him, but there it was and there it stayed. He held the cigarette between his lips; the lighter was flicked on; a deep and desperate inhale followed, then he leaned back with his eyes fluttering shut in bliss, fifteen minutes of his life drifting away between his index finger and thumb.

Now - only now did he feel at home at last. Sebastian had always felt that there was something _liminal_ about homecoming: tours forced him away from his home for longer periods of time than he cared for, which was partially why he had been so reluctant to add another date to his schedule as Pedro had suggested. But he was only human and once a tour began he would adjust, working in buses and catching naps with the remnants of a noisy party still going on around him, to the extent that when he was left alone at home again he felt like an outsider in his own house. It didn't help that his house was so empty - Pedro thought so, _everyone_ thought so whenever they were invited over, and he was forever being asked if he would be interested in a pet to keep him company.

But loneliness had nothing to do with it. It was purely about the size. He lived in a house that was too big for him alone, and whenever he returned from a long absence, it took some effort to fill the place back up with sounds and scents that signalled that he was back. And wasn't that, to an extent, a problem everyone had when they were alone at home? Sebastian's tastes were infinitely simple: a few hours of music, and either a coffee or a cigarette, usually helped him settle back into what was safe and familiar. If there was a _ritualistic_ flair to the way he plucked out a cigarette, held an unlit one perpetually at the side of his mouth, or poured himself a drink, it was because he approached those simple habits with a hunger proportional to his refusal to rely on the presence of others. At his age, he was convinced that it could only be a good thing.

Well. Wasn't it?

Heat prickled near his fingertips. Sebastian looked down and saw that he'd nearly burnt through the whole cigarette. Out of some childlike refusal to be defeated, he stole one final inhale from the remaining stub and filter before giving up on the cigarette, setting it down on the glass tray where it crumbled weakly into ash, the first layer out of dozens to come. The sight compelled him to press the ash flat and even against the bottom of the ashtray, and he followed through for a few minutes, using the little stub of the cigarette to aid him in his task. Then he crushed _that_ against the side of the glass, raised his head, and stared out of the kitchen window for a long time.

It was full dark outside, only the fingernail sliver of a crescent moon hanging in the sky. The concerto came to an end in the background; all he could hear now was the clatter of leaves against the wooden fence enclosing his garden. From this angle, there wasn't even a streetlight to illuminate the way.

The litter had inherited the night.

\-----

Just before midnight Sebastian switched off his laptop, left it to charge on the living room table, and turned off all the lights downstairs to prepare himself for bed. Save for the small pulsing blue light on the side of his laptop, the room turned as dark and cold as it'd been when he'd come home earlier; he didn't so much leave the rooms in his house as he _vacated_ altogether, leaving very few traces of himself behind. Other people might have been happy to leave a cushion out of place, leave an imprint of their body on the sofa, or not sweep up the crumbs from the carpet. Not him. This was a trait that made him either beloved or come across as very uncanny to other people, but as he lived by himself, he didn't have to think too hard about that most of the time.

He walked upstairs, stepped onto the small corridor linking the bathroom, his bedroom and his home studio, and walked through the darkness to grasp the handle of his bedroom door. It wasn't lit in there, either, but he didn't bother to reach for the light switch. The streetlight that shone in from the outside would suffice. He was often annoyed at its presence, having installed double-thick curtains in his house for the sole purpose of blocking out its light when he slept, but because of moments like those he couldn't bring himself to find it too distasteful.

His bedroom was simple and minimalistic as the rest of his house. His bed was neatly made, all his books and possessions were in order, and when he opened his wardrobe the few hangers he'd taken clothes off of hung apart from the rest. He mostly wore dark so the individual clothes couldn't be readily distinguished from each other; Sebastian looked at them for a long time without any particular thought in mind, the sight of the dark shapeless mass possibly tapping into an old memory or a feeling he had experienced once. Whatever it was, though, it didn't last. He closed the wardrobe door quietly, did _not_ stop to examine himself on the mirror attached to it, and took off all of his clothes. He reached out an arm to tug a nearly drawer open - frowned when he misjudged, shut that one, and opened the one just above it - and pulled out a pair of boxers, a set of loose pants and a sweatshirt, changing into them in preparation for sleep. It was chilly during nights and his radiator was further away from the bed than he would have liked.

Sebastian had never had an elaborate nightly ritual. He briefly left the room to put the clothes he'd taken off into the laundry basket (located beneath the bathroom sink), then perched on the edge of the bathtub to brush his teeth. He was there for about five minutes, again sitting in the dark with no real thought in his mind, gazing at the opposite wall. There was a towel on the radiator, but he didn't know how long it had been out for - it had to have been from before he last left the house. Best to change it. Once he'd put away his toothbrush and replaced the towel, he went back to the bedroom, closed the door behind him and pulled the curtains shut; with that act, night fell over his abode at last.

He had preferred to sleep in complete darkness and silence since he was a child. It was fitting to speak of him that he _slept like the dead_ , though he would have been aghast to hear it.

From the moment his head hit the pillow, he considered his day finished and past. Tomorrow would be a clean slate, and he would try to make the best of it. That belief was what he held onto for comfort when he was alone (and he was so _very often_ alone), and if he had ever stopped to think, a long time ago, that mere _thought_ was such a small and lonesome thing to take comfort from, he showed no signs of having been affected by it now. Within moments he was asleep, his hands folded lightly over his chest, devoid of all sound.

This was his life and this was where he lived. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened here.

And to Sebastian, that was a blessing, because everything about this country had been slightly off from the start.

*****

(But it hadn't always been that way.)

*****

Sebastian Akchoté-Bozovic, thirteen years old and already weary of his lot, closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his knees. This was the first serious row that had occurred between himself and his mother ever since they had moved to the USA three weeks ago, and already it was proving to be worse than any other argument he'd had with her. His anger was balanced with a precarious sense of disbelief that he knew she shared, though he couldn't see her face at present; why, he'd never been so furious that he would rather lock himself away and starve than talk to her, before.

He didn't let on his feelings at first, not when he'd been scolded for this earlier in the day. They'd been out grocery shopping and he knew better than to make that kind of fuss outdoors. And looking back on it, he hadn't chosen the best course of action - he could have voiced his disagreement on the spot instead keeping a resentful silence, or he could have at least asked to talk with her as soon as they were in private. But at this point in time, Sebastian had been too young to consider such things. He wasn't doing this out of malice, and he was genuinely trying to understand, but he couldn't see where he had toed the line and his mother was not doing the best job of explaining it. Only with experience would he understand that she had been attempting to be _considerate_ , but right now, all he knew was that he was no longer allowed to call her 'mother' unless he did it in a different language and that was ridiculous.

So he had come home, determined that he would not be treated in such an unreasonable manner, and was currently in the process of showing this by locking himself in his room and refusing to budge. It'd been the height of the afternoon when he slammed the door behind him to signal his rebellion; even though she had been calling for hours, he refused to come out or address her in any way.

"Sebastian, _please_. Talk to me. I'm staying here until you do."

And sadly, _both_ mother and son were stubborn, which was why they were having this stand-off in the unholy hours of the night.

(He could see it all over again. It had been a moonlit night then, too.)

But it hadn't always been like this. Had this been a month ago at this hour of the evening, he would have been back home in Paris, tiptoeing carefully around the apartment to sneak himself one last snack before he had to go to bed. His mother would have been reading, or would have gone to bed early - anything other than arguing with him or sitting outside his room to try to coax him out. Life in France had felt disjointed at points, and he didn't ever remember liking school, but they'd wanted for nothing there. They'd been _happy_. Paris was a good place to grow up in.

Sebastian's family situation was complicated. He was born a Parisian because his parents had originally met in France, but things hadn't worked out; his father died unexpectedly when he was not yet two years old, leaving his Serbian mother to raise him alone, alternating between Paris and her home city of Belgrade. Thankfully, Sebastian adjusted to the back-and-forth situation well as a child, and for a time, it was good. His family doted on him, and she was never without support. Every holiday, they would pack up and board the train at Paris Est, the full day passing by in breezy bliss before they finally finished their journey at Belgrade, where his beloved grandparents stood waiting for them at the platform. His mother's smiles were full and bright whenever she watched him rush over to his grandparents, and Sebastian loved those moments when his grandfather lifted him in his strong arms and exclaimed: "Sebastian! _Moj dȅčāče!_ And just _look_ how you've grown!"

Yes, he remembered. What wonderful times they were!

But his family was also the reason why he and his mother had moved to the States, which was an act that proved to be both a saving grace and a curse. They'd helped them leave for their own good, so it wasn't something to _resent_ them for - quite the opposite - but as he grew older he looked back on his innocence with bemusement, seeing how their difficult circumstances had started further back than he’d previously realized.

His grandfather was a distinguished man, a military engineer who had worked for Josip Tito himself, and under his influence Sebastian was taught early to be proud of his family's political achievements. He knew that his family had resisted the Nazis until the end of the Great War, and that they were one of very few groups to have successfully done so, before he even learned about what that war had truly entailed. Not only that, his grandfather was fond of praising Yugoslavia's post-war circumstances, and he made sure everyone knew it. Sebastian distinctly remembered a family get-together from when he had been eight or nine years old, when his grandfather discussed the possibility that within thirty or forty years, all money would be abolished.

"- Whatever people can measure with, they will regardless. Why bring money into it and make it _worse?_ If it's inevitable that we all compare ourselves to one another, I say: at least let us measure according to what we can do and what we need, instead of seeing how many _trinkets_ we can afford to have lying around," he'd exclaimed, before turning to Sebastian, who'd been listening quietly from the sofa. "and why do you think that'd be?"

"Because people aren't things and that's the fair thing to do, _deda_ ," he had answered, and had received a hearty laugh and a pat on the head in response. Later that evening he overheard his grandfather singing his praises to his mother: "You shouldn't worry about _where_ he grows up, I can see that one day he will become a great man: why, the boy speaks to me as if he were Marx himself."

He was more correct about that than anyone could have foreseen. Sebastian had not quite turned thirteen years old when the news came: Slovenia had voted to declare independence. The others wanted to go their own ways as well. Serbia had even prepared new money behind everyone's back, and people were very unhappy about this, for until then they'd all been under the impression that they had _some_ say over their livelihoods. Yugoslavia was breaking apart, and they said it was for good - or _else._

He did not see his family for a long time after that. It was good fortune that he later got to see them at all. By nature they were all good-hearted stoics about the matter, even with the war looming over their heads; he still remembered the smiling, whiskered kiss on the forehead his grandfather had given him before his and his mother boarded the train to Munich, how his aunt had rubbed her cheek against his and told him that he needn't worry, how they had promised that in no time at all, they would all meet again in France. That was the last time Sebastian was in Belgrade during his childhood, and even though he'd smiled at each promise and blessing, he had known deep in his heart that something was wrong.

Back in Paris - not even then, really, as soon as they switched trains from Munich, his mother confirmed his fears: there would be no more trips to Belgrade for the time being. Sebastian became dejected for a time, less because of the news and more because he felt that the worst was yet to come. They carried on living in Paris for a few months, as if they would stay there until everything was better again - but when his mother finally sat him down one morning and told him that they would be moving far away, so far that they might never return to Belgrade at all, he wasn't surprised in the least. He merely asked how long they had left, and went back to his room to start packing up his things in silence. Sebastian was so used to packing at this point, and had so familiarized himself with the idea of _things that were necessary_ and _things that were not_ , that he almost forgot that they were packing up their entire lives this time around. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so tragic.

In a way, even at a young age, Sebastian had checked out of the idea of _physical_ homes altogether. He did not cry when they left their Paris home behind for good, though his mother spent a good hour silently holding her face in her hands on the way to the airport; they'd had to leave a great deal of possessions behind, but he missed very little of it, and was unafraid of saying so. He was dismayed about Belgrade, but not in the sense that he wanted to stay and relax in the old family home. For Sebastian, home was the feather-light pressure of his passport in his breast pocket, the sensation of his grandmother taking his cold hands in her warm, wrinkled own when he and his mother disembarked the train at Belgrade, the gentle birdsong that accompanied every dawn over Paris. Only what he knew, remembered, and sought to learn mattered; as long as he was carrying all of that within himself, he was ' _home'_. The fact that they were in the States should not have mattered.  
So when he'd called for his mother earlier that day, and she turned and snapped at him to _use English_ from now on, he could not help but take it as an immediate threat to his safety.

"Sebastian, I'm at the end of my rope. You need to come out. _Right now_."

And he wasn't going to stand for that, even if it meant going against his mother's wishes. Perhaps he was taking this so hard _because_ she was his mother. No, almost definitely. He'd thought she would be the one person to always take his side.

"You are making this _unnecessarily difficult_ for yourself."

So be it. He had been in here for long enough to know that he was just provoking her at this stage, but he never admitted her words hurt him, not even once. She was so unaccustomed to fighting with him that she soon fell back to desperate coaxing, trying to resolve this as peacefully as she could, but there was no telling how long her patience would last.  
She was asking this of him for his own good, she said, no matter whether he listened to her or not, he _was_ going to have to use more and more English in his daily life from now on. She couldn't understand why he was rebelling over such a small demand; he had been so good before.  
It wasn't if they didn't already know English, and hadn't he studied it especially hard at school?  
Everyone would understand them better. It would be easier to get along with people.  
She would be less sad if he could adjust well to this new life.  
He'd never let her down before. And so on.

But this confused him even more, and not in the way that made him want to come out and ask her to clarify. His mother had always been such a strong woman; he could understand that his choice in languages aggravated her in a _logical_ sense, but he could not fathom why it would make her _sad_ , if this matter really was as minor as she claimed it was. It wasn't as if he wanted her to feel that way, but Sebastian had never considered himself to be a source of sadness for his mother - hearing her use the word 'sad' was more disturbing to him than anything. As he reached this point in his thoughts, he heard his mother lean against the door with a tired moan. "I don't understand why you're doing this to me," she said. "I'd have expected you to be unhappy about more important things, not... not this."

"But it _is_ important," he spoke up at last, the first response he had given her in hours. "what if I don't _want_ to be understood? What if it's a secret I want to tell you or it's something I don't know how to say in English?"

His mother sighed heavily. "It's not that, darling, if you would just..."

"Why can't I use French?"

_"Sebastian."_

"Why, _Maman?_ "

She appeared to be lost for words for a while. He said nothing else while she attempted to come up with an answer.

"It's the... it's... _some people_ ," she finally began to speak, every word laced with agitation. Come to think of it, while it was true that his mother was a strong woman, she _had_ particularly been on edge recently. Being in any new country was bound to induce such feelings - Sebastian had spent the first two weeks with perpetual butterflies in his stomach, too - and for a moment he wondered whether he was tormenting her for no good reason at all. "some people... just think it's disgusting that anyone would come into a country without being able to speak the language. Those people will want to hurt you for that alone. Why - you ask me _why_ , but the reason isn't more complicated than what I've been telling you all along, it's not a _choice_. Things are different now and you need to do _everything_ you can to make yourself understood, and understand other people in turn," here she paused and there was a hint of bitterness in her voice when she resumed, something he did not fail to catch. "you might as well, Sebastian, that's the point I'm trying to make. _You might as well._ Why make things more difficult for yourself?"

Sebastian had no sympathy for that view. In an immature, boyish way, he wanted to be unkind. "So what? So I just need to get over it, because it's inconvenient for other people that I'm not one of them? That's ridiculous! Maybe I don't want to be understood by them if that's how they are!"

 _"I am your mother and I need you to be safe!"_ she suddenly shouted, and Sebastian flinched. "do you think I left Belgrade with you so that I could see you being hurt again? And for what? So that other people can shout at you to speak English or go back to wherever you came from? What do you think that's going to prove, Sebastian, do you think that's going to make me feel _better?_ Do you? You're all I have now - you're _my_ son, you've always been _mine_ to protect. Do you hear me? _Mine!_ Make no mistake about that! Are you going to be stubborn even now?"

Sudden anger boiled inside him once more. " _Yes, even now!_ " he yelled.

But it wasn't directed towards his mother this time, rather the circumstances that had forced them into this situation. He was angry for her sake _and_ his own and knew no other way to express it; when he was met with stunned silence, he immediately regretted what he'd done. But, in the end, she was unable to take it any more. Sebastian flinched back again as he heard the dull, useless thud of her hands against the door. "God, _Sebastian!_ You little brat!" she cried - then before he fully knew what was happening, the door was flung open and she was holding him tight against her chest, bursting into sobs as he'd never seen her do before. He had won the battle; she had given up on persuading him, but as he looked up at her crying face all he could feel was shock and slow-rising guilt. She wept for what seemed like an age while he stayed there helplessly (a tentative hug and a ' _ne placi, mama_ ' got him nowhere), and he was at the verge of panicking himself when her shoulders shook for the last time and she quietened at last.

"All right," his mother said finally, dabbing her eyes with one hand and gently helping him stand with the other. Her voice was hoarse but steady, in the way one sounds when a difficult resolution has been reached. "all right, I understand... come on, let's get you some dinner, you must be starving..."

No comments were needed on that. Sebastian kept a tight hold on her hand all the way downstairs.

Once he'd been fed (he was _hungry_ \- it broke her heart all over again to see him so ravenous, she kept heaping more on his plate) and he'd had a bath, they sat on the sofa for a _tête-à-tête_ that was long overdue. He spoke up first and offered a meek but sincere apology for having been difficult, which she accepted with a kiss on his forehead. But he wouldn't apologize for anything he'd done that had been _reasonable_ , and they both knew it. Sitting there, finally having gained his mother's complete attention, he calmly reiterated that it just wasn't necessary to erase all they had been for the sake of fitting into this country. If someone had a problem with them functioning in a non-native language, regardless of how commonplace that opinion might be, that was their own problem and not his nor hers. There were people in France who spouted such opinions, too, when they'd lived there; they'd both found those people ridiculous then, and had never been afraid of saying so. Why would it be any different now?

" _Moja bebo_ ," she said sadly when he'd finished, and hugged him close. "I'm sorry. It was wrong of me to try to force you. I was just - _afraid_. I'm very frightened, Sebastian. Yes, at last. Because this could go on for ever. We might be safe here, but this... having to _run away_ , that wasn't the kind of life I wanted for you. Especially not when you're still so young," she broke off briefly as she closed her eyes, blinking back her tears, then continued. "but I can see now. Even if you did what I asked, it wouldn't be the best thing for you. What was I thinking? - _ne,_ Sebastian, I can't ask you to forget. What about our family? We might have had to leave them behind, but one day you'll go and visit. Or we both might go back and live like we used to before, just that you'd be a little older. We can't forget about all of that, can we?"

He nodded, clinging onto her arm. His mother already seemed to be in a better mood, having seen what he _wanted_ ; he wasn't as open about those things in daily life as he ought to have been.

"So it is. I won't demand that of you again. But it _has_ to be English from now on, Sebastian, for most things... we just... can't get by without it. Not here. So I want to ask this of you, darling: use English whenever you're out and about, and with me-" he was about to protest again, she held him off by stroking his hair. "- _only_ when we're in public. But speak freely at home, wherever home may be months and years from now, because that should be the one place where you can. And maybe one day you'll fall in love with someone, maybe you'll want to have children - when that happens, teach _them_ what you know. Keep it alive. You'll do that for me, won't you?" his mother held his hand then, the look on her face somewhere between sadness and smiling. "that's a long way off yet, I know. But promise me, Sebastian. Promise me that you'll be good, but that I will always be your _majka_ or your _Maman_ , no matter where we go."

"I promise," he said, and buried his face into her shoulder.

\-----

Sebastian was dreaming. His dreams were generally awful, so this was an unfortunate turn of events.

He usually slept deep and dreamt seldom, but whenever he did, it was always the same dream. Sebastian would begin each time by standing in a room devoid of all furnishings. After a few seconds, he would tire of looking around, but he always did so despite knowing that there was nothing in there. He would then turn towards the door, push it open, and what he saw upon leaving the room was a long, darkened hallway of doors leading so far beyond that he could see no end in sight.

He knew well what he had to do. He must walk the whole length of the hall and face what awaited him at the end, no matter how long it took. For in this dream, he was not quite in control of himself: he was at best fulfilling some sort of personal obligation and at worst a slave to another, and if he successfully completed his task perhaps they would let him go free. So he walked for what seemed an eternity, never thirsting nor tiring, nothing but the sound of his footsteps accompanying his journey. Sebastian didn't know where any of those doors led to, and never stopped to check, because he was afraid of what he would find behind them. Sometimes he perked up the courage to stop in front of one, but always lost his nerve at the last second with his hand hovering over the handle; sometimes he paused in his footsteps in an attempt to hear what was happening behind one of the doors, but he was only ever answered by silence. In this way he walked, night after night, malaise pounding in his chest as he sought the end that never came. Then he would awake, smoke a few cigarettes, and be afforded a few weeks of complete dreamlessness before the same thing happened all over again.

But that was if it was a good night. If _walking_ was all he had to do, he would actually have been grateful. If he was unlucky, he faced additional obstacles in his way, and it seemed that tonight was an especially bad night.

_Hello, Sebastian._

It had started again.

_How are you feeling?_

Sebastian could never predict what triggered it, but several instances of this dream had a _voice_ accompanying him, from when he was past the tenth or eleventh door or so. He knew only that it talked to him of his past or his occasional fears, so it most likely had something to do with his mental state, but whatever perturbation he felt in real life didn't always match the dream. Years ago, when he'd been unfamiliar with the experience, he'd attempted to engage the voice in conversation a few times; best not to talk of what had come of those efforts. Nowadays he just ignored it as best as he could.

Having the voice around had only one advantage: it was an intrusion that made Sebastian realize that he was dreaming, and once he was lucid, he could always break free. Whether he could escape fast enough was a different matter, but it was better than having to wander for hours on end, helplessly lost in the ether. He put his hands in his pockets so that his clenched fists couldn't be seen, and kept on walking.

_Looking forward to your holiday? You earned it, I'm sure._

He did this because otherwise, the voice would try to _grab his hand_ and hold on. He never allowed himself to look, and for most part he thought of the voice as disembodied, but he had felt it once or twice as a tangible presence and did not care to repeat the experience. "Wake up," he mumbled to himself, trying his best not to move his lips. "Sebastian, wake up."

_Still, I hope you know what you're doing. You're a big boy now, aren't you?_

"I don't care. _Wake up_."

_Ha. Just as I thought. Of course you don't know what you're doing._

He shut his eyes tightly, not wanting to admit that the voice was getting to him. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself staring back up at the blank surface of his bedroom ceiling. But Sebastian was not at all relieved by this sight; rather, it horrified him because somehow he felt that the _dream was still going_. His heart was still on overdrive exactly as it had been when he'd been walking down the hallway, and he could still hear the voice as clearly as ever, even though by this point it ought to have fallen silent. This was a problem.

_You'll stay here a while, and before a month is up, you're going to go away again._

"Shut _up_ , Jesus Christ, leave me alone," he muttered feverishly as he tried to get up. While he wasn't having much success, and while it looked undignified, this was still doing him a lot of good. Sebastian would not have been able to muster the strength to leave, had he actually given ear to what the voice was saying; no force was a better motivator than the _truth_ , or the avoidance of it rather, when it came to him. He paused, huffing out a quick breath, and resumed his struggle.

_You might even call up Pedro, pleading for that extra date on your schedule. Won't that be a sight to see?_

One of his feet touched the floor at last. The carpet felt _stiff_ under it for some reason. Then he realized that it was just him - he was so tense that he could barely move another inch. Sebastian tried to move his hands upwards and felt only the tips of his fingers twitch (he'd wanted to cover his ears, well, _that_ plan was out) so he gave up trying to do anything complicated for the time being and just focused on leaving the bed one limb at a time. Sebastian swung his other leg over after a particularly agonizing minute; his hands would let him grasp at the headboard to support himself, so he did that to let sensation flood back into his body; slowly, ever so slowly, he stood up, the blankets falling off his body to settle on the ground. That was half the task done. Now he needed to navigate his way through the darkness.

_Don't get me wrong, I only want the best for you. I always have._

Sebastian reached out a hand to steady himself against the wall. The surface was cool against his palm.  
If he hesitated any longer-

_I'm just saying._

\- he closed his eyes tightly and made his way across the room, every step weighing him down as the paranoia that he was in a room with _clutter_ swept over his mind, even though that was ridiculous and he kept everything in his house highly organized because he was occasionally susceptible to moments like those and yet never saw it coming whenever he had an episode, though all that was irrelevant now that he was touching the wardrobe and it was only a few more steps until he reached the door which he was now beginning to regret having closed though it was supremely unlikely that he would ever be able to change _that_ part of his routine _and then his hand grasped roughly at the handle_ and he was outside. The blissfully cool air washed over his face and he shivered the way a cat spattered with water would - but when it was all over, and he opened his eyes, he instantly found himself calm once more.

_By spending your time outdoors._

Well, the voice lingered, but he now only heard it as a faint echo. He supposed that the dream had made him literally walk out of it this time around; he rubbed his forehead with one hand and sighed, feeling an exhausted chill coming on. It was getting worse with time, it seemed, and he had no idea how to fix the mess.

Sebastian glanced over to his left. The stairwell was darkened and silent. Even though he could not have been in bed for more than three hours, there was no chance of him going back to sleep that night. As he looked down at the gloom below, he weighed up his options under the pretence that he had any; when those episodes came by day, or whenever other people were near, he could find an easy distraction somewhere or work on his music. Not so much in the middle of the night. He only had one remedy for those times, one which stemmed from a habit he'd had since he was a boy - while the clean-up afterwards could be tedious, it was still a damned good one.

That was the only logical course of action, then. He would go down to the kitchen and see what he could work with.  
No, he _couldn't_ do without buying brown sugar now that this had happened. Funny how things worked out.

_You don't have to see the writing on the wall._

Either way, before he did _any_ of that, he could do with another cigarette.

*****

Such were the lengths that Sebastian and his mother had to go in order to resolve their conflict that night. But tense moments like _those_ were an anomaly between them - on the whole, his mother was good to him, and he loved her very much. If anything, she had been _too_ good to him. She might have relented on the issue of languages, and in fact allowed him greater freedom around the house than she had done anywhere else, but the fact remained that she prioritized his safety above all. Anything she deemed a threat to his resolve, she kept from him, and sought to protect him for as long as she possibly could.

 _Someone_ had to show him that dedication. Sebastian dreaded to think of what might have become of him, otherwise.

But his mother alone could not maintain a conspiracy of silence. It wasn't long before he understood that they had essentially become refugees, though they had not entered the country under that label. They had done their best to leave a normal life behind to enter a life that appeared just as normal on the outside; as soon as they arrived, he began attending a nearby school, and his mother started working. They managed their daily lives adequately, did their best to integrate, though they kept to themselves if they were able. And as a freshly thirteen-year old boy, he certainly hadn't felt as if they had fled from any tangible danger; these were the days before the real battles began to break out, and no one (let alone him) could foresee just how bad it was going to get.

It eventually turned out that ' _bad_ ' did not do the situation justice. Once reports of massacres and war crimes began pouring in, he _had_ to realize the gravity of what was happening, regardless of whether he was ready for it or not. The events that occurred in Yugoslavia for the following decade affected how people treated him, in ways he did not come to terms with for a long time.

A lot of things had to change in their lives over the years.  
Sebastian's mother had been arguing out of fear more than acute knowledge when they'd fought that night, but her fears proved to be well-founded within months. Some people really were just that vicious, not to mention unnecessarily vocal, about hearing a language that wasn't English spoken around them; Sebastian first observed this hatred directed towards a young woman chatting in Spanish to her child, then had the dubious privilege of experiencing it for himself when a classmate decided that his accent was too ' _commie_ ' for their liking. He encountered those people far less than his mother had feared, but he found the few times that he did so utterly obnoxious that he found himself defaulting to her advice: soon English found its way to his tongue quicker than any other speech, and there it took root with a vengeance, threatening away thoughts unutterable in that one language with the warning that _they weren't welcome._

It was a powerful warning. So effective, in fact, that it froze him in time.

As the years went past Sebastian found himself steadily adopting the _English_ pronunciation of foreign words, even if the proper way lingered at the tip of his tongue for minutes on end. Deprived of an outlet, the quarrel between French and Serbian - which had so often plagued him during the transition from one country to another - stilled in his mouth, leaving those parts of him stunted at thirteen years of age, unable to think too far beyond what he had originally been capable of. He talked to his mother more than ever, but she alone could not provide enough support to keep those languages flourishing within his mind; the fact that he talked like a child would always make sense to her, no matter how old he became, because he was her child. Sebastian needed other people who could _challenge_ him in various languages, who would address him in ways he would be forced to learn alone. They eventually came along, but not before he had undergone a great deal of anguish over the matter. He found it supremely undignified that his mind could not match the speech that he had once known and loved best, because that realization was one that framed his situation as that of _loss_ instead of renewal, and he hated acknowledging that he had lost any part of himself at all.

( _It must have been hard for you to lose everything,_ a teacher had said to him once, and whenever he remembered those words it never failed to make him angry, even after he had grown up. Surely he'd always had his _life?_ )

His mother told him stories some nights, _usually_ in gentle, murmured Serbian, both of the past and of what was currently happening in Belgrade. There was plenty for her to tell, especially regarding the latter. Family connections had ensured that her job search wasn't as difficult as it could have been, and she was able to work as a typist at a small news agency that focused exclusively on events behind the Iron Curtain. When one of the translators left, they called on her to fill in as a temporary measure and eventually _that_ became her full-time job; this meant longer hours and more work for her to do, but it also meant stability and because of that she could hardly complain. It wasn't the best money - but then it wasn't ever going to be, unless they waited out a few more years and struck lucky in the meantime. It still was enough to support a quiet life for Sebastian and herself, and any work she did overtime made money that was now much welcomed in Belgrade; the dinar had become worthless, the papers said, and that meant that _they_ were now in charge of providing hard currency for their family back home.

This wasn't what hit his mother the hardest. She was almost exclusively motivated by responsibility, and was able to take their financial challenges in stride, but _alienation_ was a different matter. Her job ensured that she was a well-informed citizen at the end of every day, and this both relieved and depressed her immensely, knowing what was happening in the land they had left behind. It was because of her that Sebastian grew to distrust newspapers and magazines; she advised him that he would be better off not reading them, even if he _was_ desperate for news from Belgrade, because everything reported in print was coloured by sensationalism and the USA had it particularly bad. It could only make him feel worse. On this he trusted her and took her advice, and she was glad for it, though there was no way for her to shield herself from the same.

But then, who else could have talked to Sebastian in the way he needed? She bore that pain for him willingly - he in turn felt worse for it, but loved her ever more for it. This wasn't the best environment for the sweet sort of gratitude to thrive, but they managed.

Time passed. Sebastian turned fourteen, and then it was summer again. He officially dropped the _Bozovic_ from his surname. He'd been encouraged to do that even when he'd lived in Paris, so he didn't find it surprising that he eventually followed through, but he felt that name's absence as a deeper wound. He could re-learn languages and move to wherever he pleased later in life, but a name once rejected wasn't a thing that anyone could retrieve for him. Sure, he could have added it back in, but what would that prove other than to cheapen the value of his name? Names were gained under strictly-defined circumstances and not easily lost because they had _weight_ \- a person changed their name when they wanted to define the worth of it for themselves, instead of relying on the burden others had placed upon them. But to do so was to acknowledge that the original name, the _lost_ name, had exerted such a heavy and disturbing influence on their person that they had to do something about it.

It was the same with him. He never felt as if he was worthy to claim 'Bozovic' for himself again. He took it especially hard because he realized that _France_ would have preferred him without that name as well, once war broke out proper and the entire Serbian existence became a political _faux-pas_. Worse than losing a home was knowing that home had never wanted you at all.

 _Aux armes, citoyens!_  
_Formez vos bataillons!_  
_Marchons, marchons,_  
_qu'un sang impur_  
_abreuve nos sillons!_

So that was what he was to his country of birth, part of the _sang impur_. It was a shame about the tune. He had loved it so.  
But he was apparently still responsible for what he had fled from and people's lives were less important than fear.

The worst thing about living like this was that most of their turmoil was _invisible_. Outside the home, Sebastian and his mother were model citizens. The news agency trusted her with more responsibilities over time; Sebastian wasn't disliked at school, wasn't bullied, and performed well in most classes. When he'd been new to this country, he'd been teased a few times for his accent and by students who seemed to think he had an _arrogant_ face, with his straight features and firm-set lips - but as he progressed through the school years, that died down, and he was mostly left to his own devices. All in all, they presented no trouble. But the problem was that not being troublesome took all the effort they could physically muster, and the exhaustion often rendered both of them silent - first out of perceived necessity, then due to what could only be described as a deep, slow-developing trauma. They were quiet lest they hesitated or stammered at the wrong time, and when they did talk, long pauses made themselves known where they'd been swift-spoken before.

Something was stuck. They needed their language back, and the best way to do that was through the language of others. The news was what his mother took as her lifeline, while Sebastian began to spend more of his time between the school library and the music room. The library was a peaceful place to read or study in, though he mostly read books of the non-academical kind, the ones that immersed him in the flow of the English language. More accurately, he read _translations_ of works to see how his older languages corresponded with this one. The results were interesting. If no single language out of three could make him happy, he would just have to find some combination thereof that he could make wholly his, or try to leap past the barriers of speech altogether. As the American life grew in him, he developed small sensory habits to compliment that decision: he learnt to cook, grew to enjoy long walks, and began to foster a small passion in music that would later define his entire being.

It took Sebastian a long time, however, to acknowledge those things as _skills_ and not mere coping mechanisms. He had grown to think mostly in terms of what he didn't like, where he didn't want to be, what he had to avoid - not what he actually wanted to make of his life. This had not fostered within Sebastian a sociable attitude to the world, and for most of his high school years, he was alone. Through the doors of his perception he nurtured the soul of the desert: there was a despair in it, a brutality in it, a song in it, and all of those things were in him. It would have been interesting to see what he would have made of that, had certain events during his junior year never taken place.

(But he was done remembering for now. It was time to head back to the present.)

\-----

The alarm went off at the turn of the hour, and as Sebastian rose to fetch the oven mitts, he felt an odd satisfaction at how well he'd timed this attempt. A fourth baking tray was waiting by the side. He replaced what he'd taken out with that, reset the timer, and closed the oven door before straightening up to observe how _this_ particular batch of cookies had turned out. The first lot had been a little burnt, the second more or less perfect, and this one followed in the latter's footsteps. He was pleased.

So he then proceeded to shove all of it onto a cooling rack, and promptly forgot that they were there. He might have had the urge to nibble on one of the cookies, or lick the bowl, when he'd started out - but that was before he'd opened a fresh pack of cigarettes. Cooking helped him relax only as long as he didn't tire himself out by feasting on his wares, which was why he complemented this remedy by destroying his appetite with cigarettes beforehand.

In a few hours' time he would have sobered up enough to put everything in storage, and he'd be able to spend a good few days working his way through each cookie, but he wanted to think about that later. For now he was content to just smoke one cigarette after another, neither looking at nor eating what he'd made.

He sat at the table. He was on one side, an empty chair on the other, and there was a full ashtray in between.  
Discarded filters and stubs of cigarettes previously smoked littered the ash within in abstract patterns, and he added another to the pile as he leaned back and exhaled _hard_ towards the ceiling. One last plume of smoke escaped his mouth, spiralling pearly-white against the walls, and he watched it fade away with a listless look in his eyes.

Something about _denial_ making the end goal especially worth it. That was how his friends would characterize the thought process behind this ritual, no doubt, if they ever saw him. All the more reason to never tell them about it, Sebastian thought, and this was also why he was so reluctant to talk to _anybody_ about his dreams. He didn't think he would be taken seriously, for one, and he hardly wanted to admit that he had strange ways of coping with them. Once upon a time, he _had_ been finely tuned to the language of others - but at thirty-two years of age, he'd gone so far beyond common speech that he felt himself unable to seek help.

At least he could talk to himself, and frequently did so. Best for everyone that he became his own antidote.  
_Es muss sein!_

He glanced at the timer. Ten past five in the morning with ten minutes to go; soon the skies would brighten, and he would be able to head out to shop for groceries and clear his head. The kitchen counters were littered with remnants of greaseproof paper, sugar sprinkles (both brown and white), the utensils he'd used, empty packaging and god knows what else besides - looking at the carnage made him wonder whether he ought to make use of this time to write a shopping list, and he was just leaning forwards with half a mind to search for a pen when the _phone rang_ and turned his entire life inside out.

"...!"

It rang _once_. For a solid five seconds he wondered if he was still dreaming. He stared wide-eyed at the phone all the way across the living room, half-dreading and half-waiting for it to ring again, and it didn't let him down. This time it rang once, twice - and _kept on going_. Definitely not a dream.

There was no way that even Pedro would call him at this hour. After how their last conversation had ended, Sebastian hadn't exactly been looking forward to talking to him again, but as the chill of primal terror settled in his stomach he suddenly felt entirely welcoming to the idea. That would be preferable to whatever the hell this was, providing (of course) that this _was_ something else. As the phone's trills grated at his ear he tried to ignore it for all of five seconds, his fingers curling around a fresh cigarette that had been lying nearby for comfort - but eventually, against common sense, he rose to his feet and made his way over to the phone. As he picked up the receiver he had a hysterical urge to either throw up or laugh.

"S-Sebastian Akchoté," he tried weakly, and when this yielded only silence, he tried again. _"allô?"_

And then he heard it. From outside, from _much closer_ than he'd expected, he heard the sound of an engine growl. It was a distinctive noise that started off soft before suddenly rising to a deep booming roar; what was more, it was a _recognizable_ sound, albeit one that he hadn't heard in maybe fifteen years. The cigarette dropped from between his fingers as he realized _what_ that sound was, just barely drowned out by the rapid beat of his pulse pounding in his ears.

It was getting too bright in here.  
_Why_ was it so bright? What was going on?

Sebastian raised his eyes to the still-covered windows. He stared ahead for what felt like an eternity before he registered that _lights_ were shining through his curtains from the outside - the very curtains that could completely block out a streetlight. Not even the sun could shine through those, or at least, that was what he'd thought. That wasn't what he was seeing, anyhow. Those particular lights were of a directed sort, concentrated roughly on two rounded spots, becoming more intense by the second; with a start he realized that those were _headlights_ , pointing directly into his house, spreading golden and unearthly around his feet in a halo. He could not even find the strength to back away.  
Something was out there and it was looking for him.

"Oh, my God," he whispered. "oh, _my God_."

The receiver crackled. Sebastian looked back at it in disbelief.  
Then _the voice_ spoke in his ear as the headlights clicked off in the distance.

**DARLING.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was so long that I wanted to get the intro post out on Tumblr first before I added the notes - which there are plenty of, as always. I think it might be likely that I will have to move the notes to their own chapter as I did for _All I Was Doing Was Breathing_ or _Pierrot Lunaire_ , but that's a consideration for later.
> 
>  _Swansong_ presents to me a unique challenge in that it's the first fic I've written while trying to grasp a language I've not encountered before. I don't believe in using Google Translate if I'm trying to get across simple phrases or words, so what little Serbo-Croatian I'm attempting to show is all learnt on the spot. Because of this, if anyone can provide it, I would appreciate corrections; I have a feeling I will need a lot of it!
> 
> * Sebastian did play at Detour Festival in LA - but that was in 2007. There would have been no Detour Festival in 2010, because the year before that, the whole thing went on 'hiatus'. There's not been a new one since.  
> * Charlotte Gainsbourg is a recent collaborator of Sebastian. _5.55_ is worth a listen, album and track both.  
>  * The Sébastien Tellier song is ' _L'Amour et La Violence_ ', and as you know, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo produced _Sexuality_. He does exist in this universe, but for once I'm leaving him out of the picture, so that unnamed cameo mention will have to suffice.  
>  * I think Brandenburg No. 5.  
> * What I've written about Sebastian's childhood are broadly all true, save for them fleeing to the USA once the Yugoslav Wars began. In reality, his family just settled in Paris. But it is true that his grandfather was a military engineer under Tito, that Sebastian and his mother went between Belgrade and Paris frequently, and that he was taught to be proud of the resistance spirit. I've said that they took the train - the most direct way to make this journey is to take a train from Paris Est, switch at München Hauptbahnhof, and disembark at Belgrade. It takes about 21 hours in total. Yugoslavia had an unusual degree of freedom of movement even then.  
> * I made use of some Marx/Engels quotes in the conversation between Sebastian and his grandfather. Aside from the 'each according to his ability' part, there's also the 'people regard each other only as useful objects' quote from _The Condition of the Working Class in England_.  
>  * The Serbian government [did get caught trying to issue new currency without federal approval](http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/10/world/financial-scandal-rocks-yugoslavia.html). The dinar (mentioned a little further down) also lost its value and Yugoslavia suffered from hyperinflation for quite some years.  
> * I wish I hadn't been told to learn English properly or go home when I immigrated as a child, but I was, so. Admittedly I am in the UK and I don't know how more or less blatant American attitudes to this are.  
> * ' _Ne placi_ ' means 'don't cry'. Every Serbo-Croatian utterance before this are just terms of endearment, they are obvious through context.  
> * The 'past' section of the fic largely takes place between 1994-1995, which was immediately before/during the Bosnian genocide. I've made it sound like the newspapers were raving every other day about the war, but actually, many war crimes in Yugoslavia were swept under the rug at the time. Those events came to light only recently, and justice is still not being served.  
> * The words of _La Marseillaise_ have always been controversial. They're popular right now, apparently, because of the anthem's role in the War on Terror.  
>  * Yep - a _Discworld_ homage.
> 
> I am perpetually thirsty for feedback/comments/messages. Give me a shout here or [on my Tumblr](http://kimbk.tumblr.com/ask) and I will adore you until the heat death of the universe


	2. Im Frühling

**Swansong (Chapter 02) - ' _Im Frühling_ '**

*****

Fifteen summers ago, Sebastian was bereaved.  
No one in his family died, and he was never sure whether he ought to have called _him_ a 'friend', but he lost him all the same.

He had been seventeen when that happened. Their acquaintance had begun the year before, and had lasted almost exactly twelve months. This was how Sebastian characterized the relationship they'd had, in the most objective manner possible, because nothing ever seemed right when he tried to remember their time together in more natural ways.

But there was one thing he always recalled with the utmost clarity: the fact that they'd first met during a storm.

*****

The January of 1994 was an especially fickle one in Los Angeles, alternating rain and sun and snow to a degree barely heard of in such a climate. Sebastian was most of the way through his penultimate year of high school and looking desperately forward to the end; that was all he thought about nowadays when he had no time for leisure. His mother had insisted that he ought to think about university, which was an idea that held neither positive nor negative weight in his mind, but he worked for the sake of at least getting a foot in that door. Sebastian did not need to work _extremely_ hard to achieve this - he was a good student who desired _only_ as much as he was capable of - so it seemed sensible to put in the effort.

Three whole years! The thought that he had spent _that_ long apart didn't feel real to him, so far away in this country where his family couldn't _see_ how much he'd matured. Sebastian thought himself selfish whenever he felt that way, that word bringing with it a guilt which stabbed at his heart for years afterwards. Oh, he knew his family had more immediate concerns at hand. And they _were_ updated on how he was doing; he was a proficient writer of letters by now, because he made sure to write to his family at least every week, if not more often. But that wasn't a substitute for what they needed, which was to be able to _see each other_ , and the longer Sebastian was away the more he feared losing his grasp on the entire situation. It felt obscene, almost, to be running a mandated mile in the school field with the sweet breeze in his hair when his relatives were trying to survive in a country torn apart by conflict.

He'd asked his mother just once, what would happen if the war went on for much longer, or did not end at all. She assured him that it _would_ end, but was equally firm to insist that if it did not end _in time,_ he must be prepared to forget all that he'd had back home. Because this was hard to accept, he never asked again, and dwelt sadly upon the thought by himself for a while.

But when he had less serious things on his mind, life was bearable - more than worth living, in fact. He was often lonely in that he was nostalgic for what was not quite _impossible_ to return to - he wanted to look around the antique stalls at St-Ouen, taste his grandmother's cooking, and gaze out of the window to see the sunset glimmer on the Danube in the distance - yet had no one, save for his mother, who could understand his specific wants. But that wasn't his fault, nor anyone else's, and he could remedy that later when there was peace at home. So when those occasional moments of despondency came around, Sebastian folded them away carefully for safekeeping, and focused on his immediate senses instead. His tastes were not difficult to satisfy and he was both voracious and accepting.

He read a great deal and wrote just as much, though he didn't think he had it in him to tell _stories_. It was usually letters, notes, and minor verses that he wrote, with the occasional sprinkling of fan correspondence whenever he wanted to show his appreciation towards an up-and-coming artist or magazine. He used English for most things, Serbian when he wrote to his family back home, and French for when he wanted to leave lengthy notes to his mother. The first time he'd done the latter was a cheerful memory for them both; she'd come home to a full page in Sebastian's hand pinned up on the fridge, and upon discovering him eating cereal right in the next room over, she'd held up the note in confusion. _"C'est quoi?"_

" _Bonsoir, Maman_ ," he mumbled through his last spoonful of cereal, paused to sip the milk from his bowl, and gestured to the note. "I thought you might be late, I just thought it'd be fun to tell you about today. But I forgot to add. I got full marks in German today," he set the bowl next to him. "and _now_ we're out of milk."

She stood there and read through the note for a few seconds, the contents of which were true to what he'd said. Then she looked back at him, and down at the empty bowl. "You are such a strange child," she said, but she'd laughed then; she stroked his hair fondly and was so cheered for the rest of the day that she did not even mind that they'd run out of milk. Sebastian's mother may have thought him quaint at first, but she soon encouraged the practice, having discovered an amusement in _seeing_ how her son thought - and he was only too happy to oblige.

There were other things to indulge in as well. Sebastian became a fine cook within a short amount of time; he made his own lunches, and if he came home much earlier than his mother did, he would make dinner for them both and have it resting in the oven or upon the stove for when she walked through the door. Sometimes he thought she was apologetic to him for this, though he shrugged off the feeling every time. His specialty was dessert and he was especially good at baking, working what his mother called magic upon both the savoury and sweet. (He was very proud of the sweet things, not that he'd have admitted this out loud.) He also wandered plenty, not to meet anyone or go anywhere particular but simply to take in the sights. On weekends he would travel into the heart of the city or slightly out of it, always on his own and always with a small bag that had his wallet, keys, a simple lunch, a book and a Walkman in it.

Sebastian took all of those things to facilitate his hobbies, but the latter was what he loved best, both in design and what it allowed him to do. Music was truly his greatest passion. The fact that he could listen to whatever he wanted, with no more effort than switching on the radio or walking into a record store, was something that he appreciated a great deal about the USA. Sebastian had never thought of either Serbia or France as places that were _strict_ on foreign music - but back then, he'd been too young to know about the kind of music that dictatorships were afraid of, and he would likely have ended up with different musical tastes if he'd stayed in Paris, anyway. Sometimes he wondered what would have happened in such a scenario: maybe he would have eventually fallen in love with the same genres he liked now, or he wouldn't have touched them at all. All he could say was that he _was_ glad about what he liked.

Unlike his other habits, he actually had a _companion_ in music, and he could not have asked for a better one. Said companion was Sebastian's music teacher, an electrical, fierce-faced young man from that generation made to feel ashamed of themselves and their fathers and the war, and he had an attitude towards his work that did not match the casualness he wore on the surface. A great deal of what he'd wanted to do hadn't worked out, Sebastian had gathered from their conversations - over time, he had become half mad because he was trapped, and his madness trapped him in a different way that elevated and tormented him towards genius. He wanted his students to know about music: to sing it, play it, make it, dance to it, _all_ without compromise. The students were terrified of him regardless of whether they liked him or not. He cast aside all who showed disinterest or lagged behind, which contributed much to his unpopularity, but it meant that those who needed his attention were guaranteed it.

As for Sebastian?  
He liked the boy in a quiet, odd way, and Sebastian respected him the same. They enjoyed many of the same artists, and even though Sebastian never talked about his life before he'd come to the USA, he had the feeling that his teacher understood. He was the first person to realize that Sebastian was interested in making music, and the first person to try to help him accordingly; Sebastian had passion and knowledge, but he simply did not know where to begin, not having been raised in the discipline. One Monday, he asked the boy to stay behind after school, and when Sebastian turned up he handed him a classical guitar with the words: "I'd give it ten days."

"... Ten days?"

His teacher nodded. "Starting from today to this Friday, and focus on reading the music over the weekend. Practice until _next_ Friday, then tell me what you feel about it."

It was all very sudden, but Sebastian took him up on the offer. That first day he'd finished his classes early, so he sat there for three solid hours, simply adjusting to the weight and feel of the instrument. The strings hurt the tips of his fingers something awful by the end of the first session, so he went home and soaked in a hot bath to soothe them. The next day, he was advised that he would do better with shorter practice sessions and regular breaks, lest he ruin his hands, so he followed that advice. Sebastian had a good ear for notes, so he made do without paper-based music until that Thursday, when he was introduced to sheet music and fingering charts. _Those_ he kept with permission, long after he had moved onto other things, and studied as part of a wider attempt to understand the musical language. (He thought it wasn't too different to maths.) This wasn't what he'd expected to get out of practicing guitar, but in a way, that had been the point.

Oh, they were ten very gruelling days indeed - but because he respected the man greatly, he persevered. He sat and watched the boy practice at the end of the tenth day, and when Sebastian unshouldered the guitar and handed it straight back to him he took it with a smile, satisfied that they had both done their best. He did his best to imprint upon the boy the notion that it was less about the exact thing he was making himself do and more what he was _learning_ from his attempts, whether successful or not. Little by little, his teacher introduced him to concepts that he might otherwise have taken for granted. He taught Sebastian to control his musicality in dozens of small ways, and he never realized that he was learning. The guitar wasn't for him, but he had learnt to read music; he found a full piano daunting, but he fared well with keyboards; seeing this, his teacher brought in a small analog synthesizer one day, and asked Sebastian to keep it a secret between the two of them. That synthesizer would become his first true instrument, remembered _long_ after he left high school and was able to afford several of his own.

He stayed after school most days, alternating between the library and the music room. Sebastian had never objected to being alone, even as a child, so he had no qualms about keeping his own good company and believed for a long time that the small, precious, stable existence he'd carved out for himself would suffice for the rest of his time at school.

All that was where he stood during that one late-January evening.  
It was the last time he would be able to summarize his existence in such simple terms.

Sebastian was the last to leave the school library that afternoon of the Monday twenty-fourth. It was closing time. The lights dimmed behind him as he packed up his books and walked down a narrow corridor leading to the outside. Almost as soon as he pushed open the door he blinked and took a step back, alarmed at the sudden burst of _noise_ around him - thick, heavy rain was pelting down all around, and from the look of things it appeared that it'd been raining for a while. The sun was still up, but it appeared only as a silvery disk through the clouds that had clustered thickly in front of it. Far away in the distance he could see a patch of sky as dark as pitch, though he could not figure out where it was headed.

A storm was brewing, and he'd been caught at its fringes without even noticing it.

Right now he was protected by an awning that stretched over the library and the entrance of another building several meters away. Said awning, however, was made of plexiglass and the noise the rain made against it was _tremendous,_ not to mention _jagged-_ sounding in Sebastian's ears; it made it hard for him to think. But he couldn't move away or take shelter elsewhere because he hadn't brought an umbrella with him that day, and this was what annoyed him more than everything else because he usually _did_ keep one at the bottom of his satchel. He just hadn't thought that he'd need it today, the morning had started off bright and warm - when he'd first entered the library, just three hours ago, the weather had still been acceptable.

Sebastian made a mental note to pay closer attention to the weather report from then on, and glanced down at himself. His jacket was waterproof, but his bag wasn't, and he wouldn't be able to protect it even if he put on the satchel first and wore the jacket over it. And the jacket didn't have a hood, so he _was_ going to get soaked no matter what he did. He _could_ still walk home, as long as he dried off immediately afterwards, but it wouldn't be an enjoyable venture. Not just because he'd end up wet, either. He usually walked while listening to music, but he'd left the Walkman at home that day as well. He'd only been trying to make room for everything else in the satchel, but in retrospect, that was when he'd had his lunch packed - he would have been able to fit in the Walkman _and_ an umbrella if he'd been willing to endure the discomfort of a full bag until lunchtime. A lapse in his better judgement.

He checked his bag anyway. The Walkman was decidedly absent. Fantastic.

"..."

Then again, it was probably unwise to listen to music or try to walk home in a middle of a storm, whether he had an umbrella or not. Sebastian allowed himself to feel dismayed for all of five seconds before he fell back to a kind of generational stoicism about the matter. _It can't be helped,_ he thought, and while he was annoyed at himself, getting home safe was the priority. He could save the self-criticism for later.

Sebastian looked at his watch (ten past six) and then far beyond the school gates. There was a bus stop across the street where he could take cover from the rain. Sebastian hardly ever took the bus because he found _his_ particular route unreliable - it was meant to come every twenty minutes, but often pushed that limit to half an hour or more - but today he was going to have to take what he could get. He did have plenty of change, luckily enough, so he took a deep breath and left the shelter of the awning to head towards the bus stop.

The rain was cold on his skin the moment he took his first step. He winced, the drops feeling like bullets against the back of his unguarded neck and across his cheeks, but carried on. There was no one left on the school grounds, nor on the fields - normally the football team was practicing there, or some kind of training was going on, and on at least a few occasions Sebastian had seen workers come to paint over the lines anew. But this was not the sort of weather to permit those things, and anyway it was late, which was an understandable reason to want to be elsewhere. Nevertheless, it was an eerie experience to walk the deserted path along the field with no one in sight. At least the traffic lights were on his side. He was across the road and beneath the roof of the bus stop almost as soon as he was out of the school gates, scrutinizing the timetable on the side for when the next bus was meant to come.

Sebastian could expect to see one anywhere from ten to over twenty minutes' time, depending on how lucky he was. Better than nothing.

He sat down. The rain trickled down the roof in long forlorn drips. Sebastian put his bag on his lap and held his hands to his chest, breathing on them quietly to keep warm.

Once he was safely sheltered from the rain, his mind settled once again, and he felt free to gaze ahead in silence. A few cars passed by, the deep golden sun illuminating them like glistening beetles on the road. Soon the bus would come; he would get on, pay the fare, and sit at the back gazing past the faintly-fogged windows until he got home. His mother would probably be back by the time he arrived - if not, he couldn't imagine that she would be _much_ later than him - and he'd have a nice hot shower before sitting down to dinner and doing his homework. All according to routine, _and_ he wasn't going to get rained on again today. In an odd way, he was at total peace with the world while he was sitting there.

As long as he wasn't out _in_ it, Sebastian had nothing against rain at this point in his life. In fact, he even rather enjoyed the trance-like effect the noise of it invoked. The roof of the bus shelter was made of thick plastic, and the rain sounded far merrier against it than the plexiglass earlier on, which helped his mood immensely. That lethargic contentment would have carried Sebastian through the remainder of his wait, if not for the sudden appearance of a crimson sportscar coming to a stop in front of him; before the boy could even register what was happening, the driver reached over to the passenger side, rolled down the window and called out: "Need a ride, handsome?"

He didn't physically show it, save for a rapid blink of the eye, but Sebastian was so startled by this that he briefly forgot the English language. Serbian rushed to replace it first, a frantic ' _ko si vi?'_ hovering at the very tip of his tongue; French, he nudged out semi-consciously, not because he thought it was inappropriate but because his mind had suddenly gone blank on whether the driver warranted a ' _tu'_ or ' _vous_ '. He was a rather august youth and would have probably gone with the latter - if they were in _France_ , at all!

"... No," Sebastian finally uttered, shoving all thoughts of irrelevance from his mind. The syllable didn't come out as loud as he wanted, so he tried again, the words clumsy in his mouth. "no... I'm... quite, uh, all right, thank you."

"You're sure? It's getting darker than a carload of assholes out there. Not that I'm saying you're one," the young man winked and gestured to the empty seat. Sebastian just stared. "nor myself, I can guarantee that. You _are_ a student, right? You can't live far from here, let me take you home."

Had this occurred in Paris or Belgrade, Sebastian wouldn't have hesitated to turn down the offer. In fact, nothing like this _could_ have happened in either of those places: he'd have made use of the Metro in the former city, and would have hopped on buses or trams with ease in Belgrade. They came so frequently and naturally in both cities that he would never have appeared to others as if he needed a ride. But he was far away from the past now, he was no longer the quick-spoken and confident youth that he had once been, and as he stared at the driver and his car, he could not help but second-guess every possibility that arose and fell in his mind.

Luckily for him, this was a very patient stranger indeed, not to mention _convincing_. "Trust me," he said kindly, and gestured towards the seat again.

Sebastian felt that he had no choice.  
And what was more, he wasn't especially disturbed about that, either. That only came with hindsight.

He stood and walked up to the car, biting back all internal protest on the way. The driver quickly pulled on the handle from the inside, clicking the door open for him, which was another gesture that helped Sebastian feel that he wasn't making some life-or-death mistake. There was a charming _angularity_ to the car's interior, that was the first thing the boy noticed. There was no back seat, but a roomy rear shelf, and there was a wild, lovely scent like apple blossoms permeating the air. The floor was a beautiful burgundy-wine shade and the seats were a spotless pale beige, vanilla icecream to sweeten and cool the surface. This was a car that was _very_ well cared for. 

 _"- you can fly, if you'd only cut loose!_  
_Footloose, kick off your Sunday shoes,_  
_ooh-ee, Marie - shake it, shake it for me..."_

"A classic," the young man said admiringly, though he turned down the volume to allow them to talk. "I'm a real fan of _anything_ eighties, you see, do bear with me for a little while. How long does it take for you to walk home? Twenty minutes, half an hour?"

"... Thereabouts."

"Only a few minutes by car, then. Point me the way as I go, all right?" Sebastian nodded and buckled himself in. But the driver did not move. His hands were poised atop the steering wheel as if he wanted to get going, but when several seconds ticked by in complete silence, Sebastian could not help but glance quickly over at him, only to realize that he was being _stared at_ intently. "wait, you're quite..."

 _Quite what, exactly_ , he wanted to ask, discomfort prickling down his spine. He very nearly had the urge to blurt out an apology and leave the car, though what he'd need to be _sorry_ for, he didn't know. A weak "Yes?" was all he could manage in the end; he was not answered on either internal query for a long time afterwards. Certainly not while they were in the car, anyway.

The driver merely looked at Sebastian for one long moment, his eyes searching over the boy's features. Then something in his face softened - and he _smiled_.

It was not the kind of smile Sebastian had seen on a person before. As some kind of _practiced ideal_ , yes, in films or photographs, but never in real life. The stranger's lips were pink and soft-looking with the _correct_ amount of curve - neither too plump nor too thin, though Sebastian always preferred excess over lack - and while at rest they had assumed a kind of curious stillness; that particular smile came across as an intrusion of uncontrolled playfulness upon those lips, as if he'd been trying not to laugh all this time and had only _just_ lost the siege, all the joy in the world freshly breaking through. No one had looked at Sebastian that way before. That smile made all the discomfort the boy had felt previously melt away, sinking far into some unknown depth, all manner of anticipatory questions rising to fill the void in its stead: just _what_ had this person seen in Sebastian's face? What was he thinking, what long-lost halcyon memory had provoked such a smile?

But nothing came of those questions. The young man downcast his eyes, tucking his sweet unexpected radiance away for another time. Eventually, only the tiniest and the politest glimmer of his expression remained on the corners of his mouth, and as soon as that happened he started up the car again and got back on the road without a word, leaving Sebastian to feel rather ashamed for having doubted him at all.

The sun was very low on the horizon now. Sebastian looked back down at his watch again. Quarter to seven.  
He really _must_ be getting home. He was worried about his mother; he'd never gotten into trouble coming home before, but it was getting dark and he knew she would be fretting by this time. He wouldn't be scolded for it, or anything, Sebastian just didn't like to worry her more than she already was on a daily basis. He knew then that he'd made a good choice in deciding to chance this ride; him coming home late was one thing, but him coming home late _and_ being soaked down to the bone was quite another. (His having accepted a ride from someone he didn't know was beyond both of those things, so Sebastian thought it wise to keep _that_ to himself, even if he no longer felt suspicious of the other's intentions.)

"To the right," he spoke up as he saw a turn coming up. His temporary companion nodded and glanced in both directions, hands already poised to make the turn. His fingers, emerging from dark leather half-gloves, looked strong and handsomely carved in the light. In lieu of staring at the young man's face, Sebastian focused on those instead, keeping his expression schooled, though his mind was racing in a million different directions. This person was making him think upon things that he'd seldom reflected on, and he suspected that this was just as much an act of distraction as much as it was a _revelatory_ one; the tension from being in a car with a complete stranger had to go somewhere. All of this was bewildering, to say the least.

Never mind who they were, Sebastian just admired how certain people looked. He admired them strictly in that capacity and no more, though people understood that part of him somewhat less. Sebastian had little occasion to chat with other people about who he thought _looked like a good catch_ or _looked sexy_ , and thus he never knew what to say whenever the subject came up (for years afterwards, in fact); most of the time he didn't see the point in commenting on such things as sexiness, though once or twice he'd given away something about himself without quite meaning to.

Notably, this had happened in response to what his own mother had asked him once. It hadn't been _that_ long ago, but he had already put a great deal of the occasion out of his mind. They'd been discussing a TV programme, perhaps. But at some point the talk had turned to that of his father, and although he remembered nothing of the man who had loved him much as a newborn, _that_ had gotten Sebastian invested into the conversation proper. "He had such a _nice_ face, too. You have his brows, Sebastian, and his nose, though your eyes, they're more like _mine_ now, I remember when they were lighter," she had touched lightly over his forehead, and then they'd both laughed a little bit, welcoming any occasion to do so. "and you? Have you seen anyone who you thought looked nice? Maybe at school recently?"

" _Ne, mama_."

"Anywhere else? Or no one at all?"

"David Bowie," he'd said without thinking. His mother had looked at him with amusement, then he'd realized what he'd said and blushed heavily. But it'd been the truth, and even if she had found something worrying about his preferences, he wouldn't have apologized for saying it. Sebastian was very clear about not letting _shyness_ interfere with the truth.

But that was then. Forget _David Bowie_ for now; he wasn't that much of a smiler, at least, not compared to the stranger who was driving him home. His thoughts were derailing again. "Straight ahead," Sebastian spoke up, and was relieved to find his voice steadier than he'd expected. "until the next light, then left."

"Got it."

Sebastian inhaled quietly and quickly, glancing at the road outside. The rain was mostly speckles now, though there was still plenty of it coming down. He'd spent much of the ride so far looking ahead of him, only occasionally stealing glances at the other through the rear-view mirror; he didn't want to seem as if he was staring. But the more time he spent in the car, the more he found himself becoming _interested_ , in a way that was slowly settling into ease. This was a very comfortable car to sit in anyhow, and letting his thoughts wander had done him a lot of good already.

They reached the traffic lights around the time Sebastian decided that he couldn't keep his curiosity under wraps any longer. While the left turn was being made, and the young man leaned in that direction, he quickly turned his head - and _looked_.

The stranger's face was stubbled lightly, and he had a five o'clock shadow of a mustache above his lip - that was the first thing he noticed. Sebastian didn't know what to make of that face. It might have been the case that the stranger just had an inherently aged look, or maybe the falling darkness was playing tricks on him; it was impossible to know exactly how old he was. One moment he would decide that the young man must be around twenty or a bit older, but then he would think back to his boyishly-warm and airy voice and rescind said decision, because _that_ didn't feel right, either. Certainly he had never seen a more contradictory face before. But it wasn't in a _bad_ way, no; once Sebastian gave up thinking about age and started focusing on individual features, the more he liked what he saw, though the lighting initially made it hard for him to figure out how they complimented each other.

"Left again," he said. There was no response to this, but the boy was glad enough to continue admiring the other. The headlights of a passing car lit up the young man's face briefly and Sebastian saw that his eyes were a gentler shade of brown than he recalled them being; shadowed over before, most likely, by his low-set eyebrows and long eyelashes. On first glance he had a bold profile, with easily-furrowed brows and an aquiline nose, but his high cheekbones were a little too pronounced to come across as rugged and his mouth was decidedly not built for seriousness. Sebastian didn't know about anything else, but he rather liked the effect those contrasting features had on the other's face - he seemed _reliable_ , strong without the harshness, mischievous beneath the storm.

And still that smile.  
Movie-star, idealized, impeccable - quite, _quite_ extraordinary.

_Oh._

Sebastian's hand tightened on his lap.

_... Oh._

Deep down inside, something long-forgotten in his heart creaked, and began to turn.  

"You're a quiet one, aren't you?"

And there went the silence that he'd been enjoying. Even amidst the strangely pleasant feeling he'd gotten from the driver's looks, Sebastian could not help feeling guarded for a moment. But being rude about it was the last thing he wanted. "We only just met," he answered, fidgeting lightly as he entertained a few more potential topics for conversation. "I don't really know what to talk about, I guess. Though, uh... I like your car. It's a nice one."

"Isn't she?" and it was as if a light switch had flicked on somewhere, the young man's voice and face alike brightening to the point of excitement. "she's a Ferrari Testarossa. We have some excellent history together - I've been in plenty of cars but none of them were like her, you've got a good eye."

"Oh," he didn't know what to say to that. "thank you... _she's_ marvellous."

Sebastian actually had to say that word twice. The first time he'd blended the double-L together into a sound more resembling a Y, and he internally cursed at the mistake; he became tongue-tied whenever he was flustered, old accents and snatches of off-pronunciations showing through. The stranger caught it, too. "Are you French, by any chance?"

Sebastian blushed. "Half."

"Same," the other said with a laugh, looking quickly at the rear-view mirror. A car was requesting to go on ahead; he let them pass with a quick wave of the hand. "my dad's French. I've never been, though. Beautiful country and a beautiful language. You've lived there?"

"Yes. I was born there."

"I could tell. It must have been so nice."

Sebastian decided to spare him the fact that he'd had to flee from Europe, or any talk of French politics in particular. There was no use in breaking a relatively harmless fantasy - harmless for someone in the _United States_ , anyway - and the young man had been so nice to him already. The least he could do was to agree. A familiar road was coming up and he peered ahead, deciding that while this ride had been enjoyable for the most part, he wasn't fully comfortable with letting the stranger know exactly where he lived. Hopefully he would understand.  
How strange the past hour had been, with the rain - a handsome stranger with a sportscar in the dark - and David Bowie! If weirder conclusions to an average school day existed, Sebastian had yet to know of those.

"Could you drop me off at the end of that road? I don't live far, I can make it home from there."

The young man craned his neck to look. "... By where the red car's passing?"

"Yes, please."

He had no idea how he was going to handle being asked whether he just _didn't trust other people or something_ , but it turned out to be an unfounded worry. The driver just nodded and whistled along to the music until the traffic got moving again; he swerved slightly to wedge the car into an empty spot, which was probably too tight for the Testarossa to stay for long. "Here we are. Be careful, I'm not sure how close we are to the pavement."

Sebastian opened the door just a crack. There was enough room for him to step out, and so he did, breathing in the rapidly cooling air. (Behind him, the young man was rolling down the window again.) The rain had stopped a while ago; small puddles littered the already-drying pavement, the tip of his shoes rippling the one nearest to him, and he spared them a glance before looking back. He was very glad to be home - well, less than five minutes away from it - but then the young man met his eyes and smiled, looking ever so pleased with himself, and he suddenly didn't want to leave. The windshield wipers had fallen silent and the car had been warm and dry. Sebastian Akchoté felt bereft.

"You take care, now," the driver was saying, just as kind and welcoming as when he'd first asked Sebastian to trust him. He sounded completely unaware of the boy's internal conflict. _I suppose this is goodbye_ lingered on Sebastian's lips - he rejected it. _I don't know if I'll see you again_ received the same treatment. Sebastian wanted this experience to occupy _some_ kind of eternity in his heart, regardless of whether he would actually see this person ever again, and so in the end he did away with all but the most neutral of farewells and extended his hand. It was only polite to exchange names, at the very least, after the favour he had done for Sebastian.

"Thank you so much for taking me home. I'm Sebastian - Sebastian Akchoté. And... I hope we'll meet again. One day."

"Vinco," the other grasped his hand and shook it firmly, his own hand warm and pleasantly rough. "it was no problem at all. We'll see each other sometime, for sure."

\-----

Sebastian woke up to a sense of impending doom and an entire house smelling of cookies.

The living room lights were off when he opened his eyes, which made him blink, frown, and turn his head to see what was going on. Doing so brushed his cheek against some soft, vertical surface, and he flinched slightly, only then realizing that he was lying on his back upon the sofa. The oven was still humming in the kitchen and the whole room smelt most sentimental, faint wafts of butter and cinnamon and white chocolate chips in the darkened air.

He decidedly did _not_ remember lying down on this sofa at any point in the past few minutes.  
What time was it anyway? Had he fallen asleep? While he had cookies in the oven? But surely he couldn't have been out for _long_ , not if he couldn't sense anything burning-

His eyes blinked quick, creating a strobe effect, only for him to clench them tight again as a loud, thick rumble sounded in the distance. The storm that Pedro had warned him of had finally arrived.  
_I'm an idiot,_ he thought, and exhaled fast to quell the half-second of panic that had bubbled up in his chest. Ever since reaching adulthood he had disliked storms. He didn't like to admit it, but he was always unsettled by them, and occasionally he was even frightened, like he was now. It wasn't very rational, maybe, but he felt storms to be a threat to his existence - they charged the air in a way that made it feel _wrong_ for him to breathe, sending tiny prickles like fire ants down his skin. Even when he was doing nothing he felt as he was being _touched_ , pulled fast against some force of nature that seemed to enjoy his suffering. Absolutely dreadful.

There was a flash of light. In a few seconds the thunder would come. Sebastian bit his lip and looked over at the window and nearly screamed out loud at what he saw.

"...!"

There was a _man_ in his house.  
He was standing just a few steps away. His back was turned to Sebastian, and he, too, was watching the light streak across the sky.  
His jacket was a scarlet red, tinted a particularly ghastly shade in this light. As Sebastian stared, the man slowly turned to face him, and he could see that his skin was blue. It had nothing to do with the shadows of the house or the daybreak outside. It was an _uneven_ blue, darker nearer the back of his neck than elsewhere, reminiscent of a full-body bruise more than anything.

He must have fallen down. He must have hit his head, and _that_ was what was contributing to this vision, either that or he hadn't actually recovered from his faint yet. Maybe he'd never even fainted at all, the dream having perturbed him enough that he'd sleepwalked his way through the past few hours. All of those thoughts were worrying - Sebastian really didn't need a _concussion_ on top of all his troubles now, nor ever - but at least they were _feasible_ , which was why he clung to them with frantic desperation.

The man's gaze met Sebastian's. He seemed entirely unsurprised to see him awake.

**I SAW YOU FALL.**

Sebastian stared up at the figure wordlessly. He was illuminated by the dawn and storm-flash alone. Just before another rumble thundered across the sky, a quick flare of lightning brightened the side of the man's face, and Sebastian could almost swear that there was a faint but self-sustaining _glow_ in his eyes, only shielded for some reason behind a pair of sunglasses. And to brighten - _brighten_ was probably not the right word to describe whatever this was, either, that implied the addition of _warmth_ and the figure possessed none. The fact that he was nonchalantly standing there and enjoying one of Sebastian's cookies at the same time only added to the ghoulishness.

**YOU WEREN'T OUT FOR LONG. LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES.**  
**I'M FAIRLY SURE YOU DIDN'T HIT YOUR HEAD. DOES IT HURT?**

Almost against his own will, he mechanically reached up and felt his head. Nothing hurt. He would have preferred that he was bruised there somewhere - but now that he was really thinking about it, the only ache he felt was a vague one in his knees. He must have crumpled to the ground during his faint, rather than toppling over backwards. Not that it mattered much.

** YOU BAKE EVEN BETTER THAN I REMEMBER. IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO DRIVE HERE, AND I ONLY JUST REALIZED I WAS STARVING. I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND. **

_Never mind that. What the hell are you doing in my house? Why have you come back?_  
  
No, that wasn't right. He didn't need all those words - _one_ would serve the purpose, he had to manage just the one, surely he could do _that_. Sebastian's lips trembled with effort.

_How?!_

But nothing came out.

 **I DIDN'T MEAN TO FRIGHTEN YOU.** The figure pulled up a chair after finishing the cookie - _where did that come from?_ Sebastian wondered, before recognizing it as one of the chairs around the kitchen table - and sat down, full-gloved fingers laced together as if to demonstrate gentleness. **BUT I UNDERSTAND; NO DOUBT THE YEARS HAVE CHANGED ME.**

"... Yes," Sebastian finally managed, just about fighting the disbelief from his voice. "I can see that."

The figure quirked an eyebrow. It was an intensely familiar gesture, so clear and yet so long-lost that he ached to see it. He muttered, then, with no real reference to existence: " _Vincent_."

 **YES.** A slight smile lit up the other's face. Sebastian's heart sped up for half a second, then abruptly sank. **IT'S ME. YOUR VINCENT.**

"No," he said as soon as the words _your Vincent_ fell, shaking his head. Whatever this was, he wasn't going to have it insisting that it was his _anything_. "no, it's _not_ Vincent. It can't be. I'm just having a-" he made a vague gesture with his hand as he searched for the correct words; the side of his hand brushed against the back of the sofa in the process and he didn't even feel it, which lent credence to his belief that he was just seeing things. "- very... bad time... adjusting this time around..."

He ran out of things to say and braced himself, half convinced that he would be admonished for what he'd said. He almost hoped for it, just because it would prove what was happening right now to be a trick of _his_ mind and nothing more. But 'Vincent' did not seem in the slightest bit offended. He spent a very long time sitting there in silence, hands folded together, apparently scrutinizing the sofa cushions or the details of Sebastian's lap - the sunglasses made it hard to tell where he was looking at. The storm blared behind them both as the silence stretched between them, increasingly tense and pinched like a length of string about to snap at any second.

Sebastian shut his eyes tightly. The words _say something, please_ , lingered within his mouth like a round copper coin.

Nothing. Only the dawn's terrible chill enveloped him.

He looked back down at himself, fists balled on his lap, a faint tremor gaining on his fingertips. He wore a silver ring whenever he went out, on the little finger of his right hand, and the groove worn in his skin showed especially clearly from just how _hard_ he was clenching his hands. Was _that_ what the other was staring at? What else was there to look at, anyway? _What was going on?_

 **THE FACT THAT I AM HERE MAY BE DIFFICULT TO ACCEPT FOR NOW.** The man spoke up after what seemed like an age. Despite having wanted to hear him speak, Sebastian flinched the moment he heard the other's voice clear, having recovered enough by then to hear just how unnatural that voice was. It was not a deep voice, nor even a menacing one, but the syllables that left his mouth _clattered_ like lead slabs falling over in the dark of the night. Much like the glow in his eyes, the echo that voice held was self-sustaining, dependent on no structure nor frequency but built _into_ the way he talked. **WHICH IS FINE. I CAN'T EXPLAIN MUCH OF WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, EITHER, HOW I CAME BACK-**

"You're not him," Sebastian cut him off. It hurt him to speak of what he knew, but he had no other choice. He had to end this nonsense and get this man to go away. "don't give me any of that rubbish - you can't be him because he's _dead_."

Another rumble sounded outside, much fainter and further away. The storm was headed elsewhere, it seemed.  
But it was apt for the truth he'd just uttered. Ideally he'd have followed it up with a ' _now get out of my house_ ' or something along those lines, but it had exhausted him to acknowledge that much, and he sank back down on the sofa and closed his eyes feverishly like he had no other defence left. The man just looked down at him; though he kept a respectful silence and his expression remained calm, had Sebastian looked up at him he'd have seen the glow in his eyes intensify for a second or two before settling back.

Well, it was true, the part about 'Vincent' being dead. That should have disturbed anybody to hear, whether this man _was_ him or not.

**... AS I SAID. IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME TO ADJUST. BUT... WE CAN ALWAYS TALK LATER. **

And Sebastian _had_ succeeded in disturbing him. Just not for very long.

 **I SHOULD LEAVE YOU BE, NOW THAT I KNOW YOU'RE ALL RIGHT. TRY TO GET SOME REST. I'LL BE AROUND FOR A WHILE.** Sebastian heard brisk footsteps pace towards the kitchen and then back, and the small rustle of something being laid down on the armrest. **TRY ONE IF YOU HAVEN'T. THEY'RE VERY GOOD. MY COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF. I'VE PLATED THE REST, DON'T WORRY.**

Then the figure backed away in larger strides, pulled open the door, and left Sebastian be as he had promised. The door swung shut behind him without any obvious input, the click of the lock echoing in the stillness of the house, even though no key had been involved. _He got in from the outside, too_ , Sebastian thought frantically to himself, waiting for the sound of crunching gravel from outside to fade away. _I fainted after getting the call and he got in somehow, I definitely locked that door when I came home but it didn't matter because he came in anyway and now he's gone and locked me in again..._

Sebastian opened his eyes and looked at what had been left behind. It was a cookie. Cinnamon specks and white chocolate chips, the whole nine yards, as perfect and sweet-smelling as he had wanted them to be. Except that none of _what he wanted_ or _what he'd intended_ before the night call had come mattered any more.

He bit into the cookie. It tasted overwhelmingly of chocolate. He dropped the rest of it on the floor and curled up tightly on the sofa.

*****

Vinco soon turned out to be not _Vinco_ at all. Neither was he _Stavinsky_ or _Kavinsky_ or whatever whimsical combination he often made of his name, as fond he was of the practice. After being given that lift home, Sebastian spent a couple of days in a stupor, unsure even of whether he'd been picked up by a fellow student or a grown-up just passing by. It wasn't until the Friday of that week, when he saw the silver-haired youth fending off an annoyed teacher with _that_ particular lopsided smirk, that he confirmed what he'd wanted to know. Further investigations revealed that the boy answered to the full name of 'Vincent Belorgey', a name so unexpectedly foreign amongst others yet so familiar-sounding to him, especially when Sebastian repeated it the _correct_ way in his mind. He'd found this out through a mixture of looking through registers and eavesdropping on the other being scolded, but later when they met again and he called Vincent by name, the latter never even questioned how he had figured it out.

"Got home safely, I see," was the only thing he had said, with a flick of his cigarette and a cheeky grin. "glad I helped."

The second time they met, Sebastian carefully arranged it in the only way he knew how. He'd spotted the other's Testarossa in the school's parking lot a few times - it was harder _not_ to spot it, in all honesty, it was such a fierce shade of red - and once school had let out for the day, he waited at the edges of the parking lot for a few minutes until the other boy walked past. Then, without knowing if the other boy would recognize him or even what he'd talk about afterwards, he called out the other's name.

"Vincent?"

Vincent looked around. He met eyes with Sebastian - within moments, understanding dawned on him - and he smiled, exactly like the first time. That was the start of their proper acquaintance.

Though Sebastian's memories were always the brightest whenever Vincent was concerned, he did not actually remember much of what they talked about during this particular encounter, possibly because he later got to experience most of the things Vincent had told him about himself. Being told that something was the case could not compare to actually seeing or feeling it. Sebastian thanked him for the ride again; they found out that they were in the same grade, though for vastly different periods, and that they'd so far never encountered each other because they didn't share a single class or after-school club (drama, for Vincent specifically) between them. It emerged also that Vincent was a year older than Sebastian; some personal difficulties had come up the year before, so he'd taken the path that was unquestionably better for his well-being and had stretched out eleventh grade into two years. The younger boy divulged a little more detail about his time in France, explaining that he'd lived there for most of his life, and that he'd immigrated three years ago. And so on. They talked about the _simple_ things at first, as all people in budding relationships did.

What Sebastian did remember with vividity was the fact that Vincent was easy on the eyes, even in daylight. He wore a scarlet varsity jacket that day, unlike the dark denim vest he'd worn previously, and Sebastian soon came to recognize the former as his signature look. Once he was able to look at the other boy freely, instead of being confined to one side of his face, Sebastian was struck by just how playfully handsome he was - all of his features that could have come across as stern at first glance were softened in full, and he looked _good_ , slower than Sebastian remembered because of how he made him stare.

He didn't mean to be rude. He'd just missed this, the _closeness_ of being with a person who was wholesomely interested in him.

"Have you been looking for me all this time?"

"I spotted you last week. Friday, I think. I wanted to talk to you sooner but didn't know what your times were. Before I thought of your Testarossa I'd almost given up on talking to you again."

"I never doubted that we'd see each other fairly soon. After all, this is just one school and we're both in it, even if we don't share any classes. But thanks for coming to find me first, we could still have ended up playing hide-and-seek all over the place!"

Sebastian laughed at the thought, though if that had actually happened, he probably would have felt anxiety and heartache over it rather than whimsy. Just as their conversation was coming to a close, it began to rain in slow steady drops; Sebastian looked up at the sky and took out his umbrella, popping it open immediately, more than a little glad that he was prepared this time. "And I've kept you too long - it was, ah, nice to meet you again-"

"And it's nice to meet _you_ ," Vincent laughed; Sebastian hesitated in actually putting the umbrella over himself, wanting to dwell upon the other's smiling face for a little longer. He'd been thinking of that expression for days now, he just couldn't help it. "but why cut short a nice experience for both of us? Come on. I'm taking you home."

He _did_ try to decline this one out of politeness. It just wasn't of any use. Genesis played on the stereo, Vincent kept up a pleasant chat, and Sebastian's heart felt lighter than it had in a very long time.

From then on, this became routine. It was good fortune that they had met during the earliest months of the year, when the weather was fickle and Sebastian's umbrella would have seen a lot of use otherwise. When it was sunny or warm out Sebastian carried on with his leisurely walks, but when it was raining or gale-force winds were at play, he would usually emerge from the library to see the tell-tale scarlet of the Testarossa gleaming a distance ahead. Vincent always seemed to be keeping an eye on him, too, somehow: they didn't have much opportunity to speak during school hours, but occasionally they passed each other in the corridors and the older boy would flash him a smile every time he caught Sebastian's eye. And while he offered no explanations as to how this attitude had come about, within weeks he quickly developed a vested interest in seeing Sebastian safely back home, _regardless_ of the weather.

Sebastian first found this out after having stayed at the library until closing time on one fine, sunny evening. He stepped out of the darkened doors around six o'clock, readying himself for a long, lazy stroll back home and immediately to dinner, and thus was _immensely_ surprised when he heard a familiar car horn sound from behind him. When he spun around, wondering wildly if he was hearing things, there _he_ was - Vincent himself, in all his varsity-jacketed glory, was stepping out of his Testarossa only a few steps away. "Evening!" he called out in a cheerful voice as he walked over to Sebastian, who was too stunned to return the greeting. "just finished, have you? I'm the master of timing."

Sebastian couldn't quite believe it, not even as Vincent rested a warm hand on his shoulder. "... Have you been waiting for me all this time?"

"No way!" Vincent laughed, sweeping his fringe out of his eyes. "I mean, I did hang around for a _little_ bit after school, but I figured you had things to do. So I went and took care of some deliveries around town, thought I might see you around by now - and _voila!_ Here we are. Come on, you must be tired."

And this seemed to be the truth. Vincent accumulated work or responsibility outside school, no matter where he went - he was _always_ driving back and forth or running some kind of errand. (In the entire time Sebastian spent knowing him, he had held between three and eight different jobs - quite a few at the same time - and had done an innumerable amount of favours for others.) It was feasible that while he was waiting for Sebastian to emerge, he'd gone to take care of a few things nearby instead of sitting in his car for hours. Nevertheless, Sebastian felt that things couldn't go on like this. Vincent's kindness was not to be abused, intentionally or not, and Sebastian simply didn't _know_ enough about the other's life at this stage to be able to prevent clashes like this happening again. _Something_ needed to be done so they could be better aware of each other's schedules. So the day after, he came to school with a small handwritten note which said:

 _Vincent -_  
  
_I'm sorry about making you wait yesterday._  
_I'm going to be in the music rooms again, probably until four or half four._  
_Please don't feel the need to wait for me if those times aren't okay. Let me know._  
  
_Sebastian._

He pushed it into the other's locker slot just before classes began, and hoped for the best. He was answered three hours later. When he opened his locker to retrieve his lunch, he found a small note square on lined paper lying atop his lunchbox, and within it was the message:

 _I'll be there._  
  
_\- V_

Short and to the point. This would prove to be Vincent's trademark style whenever he was _getting things done_. Sebastian always aspired to be direct, so to him, such simplicity was a plus. In the time they knew each other, they kept up with their locker-note secret at least every other day, their frequency increasing as they grew to feel more affection for each other; the final count of those small pieces of paper would have amounted to the hundreds on both sides. And through all of this they signed off the same way each time, Sebastian with an elegant signature, Vincent with that bold, non-concealing V.

 _Vincent Belorgey_. That name always rolled smoothly off Sebastian's tongue as if he himself had grown up with it, but this was not the case for its owner. Vincent pronounced his own name American-style with a long 'i' and a great deal of hesitation, as if he was never sure if it was _right_ to refer to himself in that manner. It was because of this that he preferred nicknames; _they_ didn't make him feel so alienated from himself. Sebastian liked his own name fine, but it was the other boy's uncertainty that fascinated him. They appeared to share that sense that something about their situation, or more broadly their _identity,_ was incorrect.

Names weren't the only things that perplexed them, either. Half-French they both might have been, but Vincent had never set foot in France in his life; he was as perfect an all-American boy as anyone could possibly imagine, almost like the ideal that Sebastian (as an immigrant) felt so distant from. And Vincent didn't seem to be at peace with himself at all. Here was a boy who shared so many of Sebastian's interests, and yet by the exact same circumstance of birth that made them so alike, they had come to lead such different lives. Could anyone _really_ blame him for becoming interested in Vincent?

It was a very interesting relationship Vincent had with his heritage, in that he adored the French side himself better than the American one, but at the same time was comfortable only within the limits of the latter. He had an interest in French and performed fairly well in the language, especially after he had made Sebastian his friend, but he was never able to think in it nor consider it a part of his origins. Vincent seemed to treat his French heritage as something irrevocably out of his reach, and that was definitely not a perception that he needed to have - but what could _Sebastian_ have done to change it for the other's sake? The older boy regarded himself as a part-foreigner, half of him amateurishly out of place where the rest belonged with ease, while Sebastian felt _all_ of himself to be self-contained and fully isolated from his surroundings. This was a significant difference in attitude that neither of them had really considered before they met each other.

"It was my dad who taught me French," the older boy said, the day they discussed this matter in full. "not very much or very well, as you can see. But he taught me how to pronounce everything, what the names for certain things were, and sometimes he told me stories about when he was a little boy in France. Only sometimes, though, because he didn't actually _like_ living there. His loss. I'd have swapped places with him anytime, providing it wouldn't cause some kind of world-shattering time paradox. What he had is still a hell of a lot more than my French experience."

"How _would_ you sum up your French experience?"

Vincent grinned. "I saw dad last set foot in France over ten years ago, where he spent a night in jail for trying to smuggle eight kilos of tobacco past customs, and grandma makes some really awesome food."

Sebastian didn't even want to know how a person would conceal _eight kilograms_ of tobacco on their person. The thought of Vincent's father - Sebastian had an image of him as a taller, aged-up version of Vincent, with all the mischief that came with the package - strapping packets of the substance across his body, or trying to fend off the sniffer dogs at the airport, was one that made him giggle without quite intending to. But there were other kinds of 'French experience' that belonged to Vincent alone, surely; what did he think of the high-school French classes that he was taking?

"It's decent, I guess, but really basic stuff. And there's a lot that doesn't fit what my dad told me. School makes it all sound too... _stiff,_ let's go with that. Too proper. Which is amazing, since my teacher can't even pronounce the French 'R'. Do you reckon I'd be able to function in France with what they're teaching us?"

"I wouldn't know," and it was true; he was a learner of high-school German, having passed over the French option in favour of learning something new. Language learning was something Sebastian was used to, and he didn't want to make his life _too_ easy for himself. "though if your curriculum is anything like ours, I can make a guess. Are you still on housing? Or directions?"

" _Directions_ , we did a few weeks ago. You aren't far off. We're telling time and practicing where adverbs go in a sentence at the moment. I assume it doesn't get any more practical from there."

Sebastian shook his head apologetically. If school French was anything like school German, it wouldn't be all that useful in the bustle of daily life. Vincent sighed. "Nothing's perfect."

Indeed it wasn't. Sebastian could agree on that. (He briefly entertained the idea of teaching Vincent what he knew, then filed away that possibility for later.) Then the song changed on the stereo and the cars ahead shifted ahead at last, allowing them to move on - but the talk about languages seemed to have set off a chain of thought in Vincent. He was quiet for most of their drive, brown eyes unusually intense, trying to figure out how he ought to articulate said thought. Sebastian recognized that expression, that labyrinth-look, the distant stare of the pupils as they followed one path of ideas and turned back to alter course; the best thing to do was to leave him be until he found the solution, so he waited in silent patience until Vincent spoke again. They were almost at the end of their journey when the question came. "Say... we've known each other for a while now, and I wanted to ask. Does everyone call you _Sebastian_ , all the time? No other name or nickname?"

"I think they do."

"If someone _gave_ you a nickname, would you be okay with it?"

"Depends. Why, do you want to give me one?"

He thought Vincent blushed at that. "Yeah," he said, turning left and into the driveway that they both knew so well by this point. Even though they had come to know each other fairly well over the past weeks, he still respected Sebastian's first-time insistence that he be dropped off there. (He was so good about it that Sebastian increasingly felt that he was being unfair. It wasn't _polite_ to keep on acting as if the other wasn't worthy of his trust.) Vincent found an empty space by the pavement and parked smoothly at it, switching off the engine and letting the car fall silent before he turned to Sebastian proper. "you're the only Sebastian I know so you wouldn't _need_ one, I guess, but-"

"I'm curious, let me hear it."

Vincent smiled just a little. ( _Nervously_ , Sebastian thought.) "'Bastien'?"

He mulled over the name for a while. He actually became fond of it at first listen, so his thoughts were more _recollections_ than the acceptability of his new nickname. His mother had called him _Sebastian_ for the longest time and so had his family in Belgrade, but when he was a child so many years ago - who used to tiptoe for honey-cakes cooling on the kitchen counter, or play in the garden until the sun bid him a fond goodnight - back then they had called him _Boštjan_ , a sweet diminutive to match his age. He'd barely remembered that he had ever been called that until now. Not only had Vincent reminded him of good times, he made that name sound softer, the syllables more distinct and rather refined. It was nice.

"Sure. I like it. And you _are_ all right with me calling you Vincent?"

Relief washed over the older boy's face. "Oh, absolutely. I don't know what to make of my name most of the time, probably because I don't have it correct in my mind. I like hearing _you_ say it, though. You do it the right way."

"How _I_ say it?"

Vincent laughed. "Well, how the _French_ say it. But no one actually called me that before you came along, not even my dad. (Sebastian _never_ found out what name Vincent's father had referred to him as.) You make it sound like _vingt-cinq_ and I really like that, it's perfect for the way I look. I mean, wasn't that why you tried to find me? Because you weren't sure if I was a student or not?" Sebastian turned very pink and didn't answer. "I get that a lot, don't worry about it. Everyone thinks I look older than I am. My hair's already _silver_ , for god's sake!"

And what a _magnificent_ shade of silver it was. When the two boys first met, Vincent's hair had been fairly short, and the darkened atmosphere within the car had made it difficult for Sebastian to appreciate its colour properly. But his hair grew fast, it seemed, and now it reached past the back of his neck in a fine, flowing mane. It was _true_ silver too, streaked through with white and occasional wisps of jet-black that gave away what it had been like in the past; it wasn't bleached, Vincent hadn't been born with it, and from what Sebastian could gather, it was something he'd just lived with for several years without knowing the cause. The change had been gradual, but he had been maybe fourteen or fifteen when it had happened, _long_ before the younger boy had come into the picture. Sebastian had never seen that shade of hair on someone so young, and even after he got used to it, he was often struck by how the individual strands of Vincent's hair would catch and glitter in the light.

No one could say that Vincent wasn't a youth of many gifts, both the kind that got given away and the kind he held onto.  
That much was certain. Sebastian walked away that afternoon with a brand new name to soothe the ache over the one that he'd lost, and a nice image to dwell upon as he fell asleep. The next day held one more surprise for him, too. He'd walked into the music room, wanting to have another go on the synth, only to stumble across Vincent and his music teacher having a very pleasant chat with each other. He had not known before that day that the two were aware of each other at all, let alone that they would talk so naturally with each other as if they'd known each other for years.

"- And I tell you, Noël," Vincent was saying (for that was his teacher's first name) with a playful roll of his eyes. "for all the awards they have, I wouldn't change what _we_ have for the world, not if it would mean that we get to experiment and stage actually interesting things instead of, like, the twenty-thousandth incarnation of _Our Town_ or _The Crucible_ or whatever. They went stale years ago. _Decades._ There's only so many times you can-" then he spotted Sebastian, and waved him closer, his eyes shining with pleasant surprise. "Bastien! Fancy seeing _you_ here!"

Then it clicked. His music teacher also led the drama club, of _course_ Vincent knew him. Which meant that he and Sebastian shared an influence; for all he knew, they might both have been hearing about each other all along from the man's occasional anecdotes about the students who worked with him and sought his help. Sebastian would later feel _obscenely_ pleased about this, but he was more stunned at that point than anything. His music teacher looked back and forth between them for a moment. "I don't suppose there's a _Bastienne_ to match?" he asked, sounding dryly amused.

Sebastian blinked, confused. His music teacher glanced over at Vincent. "You haven't told him where that's from?"

Upon receiving a shake of the head in response, the man reached up to a nearby shelf and pulled down a long cardboard box with the words _Mozart: The Complete Edition_ printed along the side. He lifted up the lid and counted rapidly along the dozens of CDs nestled inside, plucking one out and giving it to Sebastian for reference.  
_Bastien und Bastienne_ , he read, and looked up. Vincent winked at him. There was much yet to learn from this world.

\-----

Sleep did not come to Sebastian for the rest of the morning. Birds had already started chirping away when Vincent left him, and not long afterwards, the sky lightened up all cool and pale grey behind him as he remained on the sofa with his face pressed hard against the cushions. It would have been a stretch to say that he had opinions about this state of being; his mind had gone completely blank once he was alone, and if he hadn't lifted his head at the exactly right time for the sun to shine hard and bright into his eyes, he would have likely stayed there for a few more hours with neither plan nor reason behind it all.

"..."

Sebastian winced, then sat up on the sofa, trying to move away from the light. Then he became aware of just how long he had been lying down, and pressed his forehead into his palm, frowning heavily into it.

Some kind of homecoming. He hadn't believed in the fixed physicality of home as a child, refused to believe it still, but even then he'd had some faith that wherever he lived was _safe_. This place was decidedly not somewhere that he would be _intruded_ upon, or at least, he'd thought.

He stood up. The cookie was still on the floor. He picked it up and took it to the kitchen, tossing it in the bin, before regarding what remained of the dawn's efforts. The oven was off and the cookies he'd baked first were still on the rack, as neat and lovely as he'd first made them; there was still sugar and flour and empty packaging everywhere, and the sink was filled with the utensils he had used, the batter mixture long since dried on. He'd have to soak them before he could clean and put them away. Sebastian glanced back at the kitchen table and only then found what he was looking for: the final batch of cookies he'd made were all there, neatly piled up on a large plate, exactly as the ghostly apparition had told him.

If that was the right word, of course.  
If _he_ was capable of arranging baked goods on plates, _ghostly_ wouldn't be the correct way to describe him, but Sebastian tried not to think too much about nomenclature because it made his head hurt. He didn't feel like having any of the cookies he'd baked, but dutifully put them away all the same, the ones on the cooling rack transferred to containers while he set the plate on the kitchen counter. Sebastian then rolled up his sleeves and spent a cursory amount of time cleaning up the kitchen, disposing of what he didn't need and wiping down the counters until they gleamed sugar-free.

It was work that kept him occupied and helped his thoughts settle. At least he didn't feel uneasy about the dream he'd had last night any more. He didn't even want a cigarette. So _that_ was something.

Though he didn't know what he was going to do about what had come afterwards. If it had been real at all.

Sebastian sighed out loud as he dried his hands. The oven clock showed eleven twenty-six. That was the latest he'd started his day in quite some time. He emptied out the ashtray before he left the kitchen, rubbing his forehead weakly - the faint had taken a lot out of him, and his thoughts were much too sluggish for his liking. He still didn't think he was bruised or concussed from it, but it couldn't hurt to examine himself in the mirror just so that he was _sure._ Then he would take a shower and eat something and go grocery shopping as he'd planned.

But he didn't get very far. As he was about to go up the stairs, there was a knock on the door. Sebastian automatically turned to go answer it, no presence of mind left in him to think about who it might be. He opened the door without a word and came face to face with the man from earlier, who was trying and failing to light a cigarette crooked in his mouth.

 **HELLO. I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE UP.** He looked up at Sebastian, the sunlight reflecting blue-tinged against his cheeks. **I HATE TO ASK THIS, BUT DO YOU HAVE A LIGHT?**

Sebastian shut the door in his face. Then he leaned against the vertical surface, holding his head in his hands.  
Reality was what stayed regardless of if one believed in it or not, indeed.

What had he done to deserve this?

Out of a burst of sheer frustration he rushed up to his room, checking himself for bruises be damned, and tugged open the bottom-most drawer without grace. Fitting to its location, it was filled with things he very rarely needed or never used at all: old headphones that he'd replaced but hadn't had the will to throw out, the most wintry of winter clothes, a bunch of wires, a handheld nutcracker (why was _that_ there?), his first proper stage outfit, and beneath all of that, a thick photo album. Most of his childhood photos were with his mother or his Serbian family, but he had kept a good few for his own sake, loath to throw them away or be parted from them even if he barely looked at them at all. The past might have been a different country, long-lost and better off erased, but to this day he found himself enslaved to its laws whenever he least expected it. This was one of those times.

"Vincent..." he muttered as he flicked through the album. "... _Vincent_."  
  
Two syllables - _van-sahn_ , airy and relaxed in the typical French manner - how long had it been since he'd thought of _that_ name? Hardly an uncommon name, for sure, but Sebastian had long ago put the whole name out of commission in response to a single person who had been called that. To be faced so starkly with it again was a shock to his system. At the back of the album came several pages of photos that he had put aside long ago to avoid looking at them; he'd even put them back to front so that he could only see the watermarked backs of the photos. He flipped to the very end of the album and ran his hand over two of them. They both had a handwritten date in pencil on the bottom-right corner, the script so very familiar still. He pulled out one that he knew was bearable and turned it over: two faces, both young and male and smiling, greeted him with perfect innocence. They were both dressed up warm in coats and matching scarves, early Christmas presents from what Sebastian remembered, and there was still snow in the background. _12.07.94_ , the date at the back read, which confirmed his memory true.

Sebastian sat down on the bed properly, still looking at the photograph. On the left-hand side was the younger version of him, smiling without a care into the camera, eyes half-lidded with mixed timing and delight. He never smiled like that nowadays, in fact most of his acquaintances would have found it downright uncanny if he did so, but there had once been a time when he'd been able to spare all the laughter and joy in the world. The one on the right-hand side of the photograph had his arm draped around the younger Sebastian; _this_ was him, the _only_ Vincent he remembered and acknowledged, the boy who had come into his life almost as quickly as he had left it fifteen years ago. Sebastian didn't really need to reference the photograph in order to see him clear, even now - he could just close his eyes and _there_ he would be, as if he'd just walked out from the doorway of some distant memory, always bright-eyed and a slow warmth burning with tousled silver hair.

And what about the apparition outside?

The hair was as before, as was his attire. The shape of his face was familiar, his mouth still the correct shape, and though Sebastian had only seen him for a few minutes, he had to acknowledge that the other's mannerisms were for the most part just as he remembered. It was _exactly_ like Vincent to see someone in trouble, and then rush in to try to put things right in their stead. Just about everything else, though, seemed off. His finger traced lightly over his younger visage in the photo - he paused, hesitated to do the same to the other face, and in the end dared the slightest touch.

Nothing came of it, of course. It was just a papered surface. This was why he hated looking at those photos, they made for such awful deceptions of the mind. He looked back down at the album, then at the other photo he'd touched over, and decided that looking at that would be an even worse idea. He knew what was depicted in it. _Knowing_ was bad enough. It was all over and gone, anyway. All that was dead now, dead and buried, he could not let himself become lost in what no longer existed.

Sebastian shut the album and put it back where it belonged, hoping inwardly that he would have no occasion to take it out again. But ignoring those photos had nothing to do with being able to avoid the _actual_ Vincent forever, and the thought of planning around this unexpected intrusion in his life was so dreadful that he almost gave up and went back to bed for the whole day, groceries or reasonable sustenance be damned. He was only good at improvising within a musical context.

Still, by mid-afternoon, Sebastian's common sense proved stronger than the wild thoughts cascading inside him. He was getting rather hungry and the need for food wasn't going to fulfil itself. God forbid that he stopped looking after _himself_ for the sake of avoiding a ghost of the past. Sebastian gave it until quarter past four - then he tossed his wallet and phone into a bag, retrieved his keys from the side, and stepped out of the house before he could convince himself to stay in. He did not even look behind him as he locked the door; he didn't know what he was going to see if he looked around, and he couldn't afford to lose his nerve.

 _Un, deux, tr_ _è_ _s_ , he counted quietly under his breath. Then he looked up, walking towards his car all the while.  
Vincent had parked by the pavement running along his front lawn. The man was lying atop the hood of the Testarossa, a freshly-lit cigarette held in his mouth, his hands behind his head, his face unmoving and raised to the sky. His neck was especially pale in the daylight. Sebastian allowed himself to notice that much, and resolutely walked past without looking at him again; Vincent didn't react at all, either, even when Sebastian tossed his bag in the back seat of his car and drove off.

(He'd meant to toss it by the _passenger_ side. He had to awkwardly reach in the gap between the seats and fish it out later.  
All Sebastian had to show for his troubles when he got to the store were some curses and a sore arm.)

When he came back, he saw that the Testarossa was still around, but Vincent was gone. He'd probably stepped out somewhere, maybe for a smoke, maybe for a walk, maybe out of Sebastian's imagination altogether. Then the man lifted out the last of his groceries, slammed his trunk shut, and chastised himself for caring at all. What nonsense he had wandered into! He had plenty of food and necessities now, and as he picked up the bags of groceries he had half a mind to simply barricade himself inside his home until the problem went away. He hadn't tried that particular tactic since he was thirteen, but this seemed the ripe time for it.

But like it or not, his resolve _was_ wavering more and more by the second. If anything, Vincent's absence made him more curious. He hadn't had a proper look at the Testarossa yet - a part of him immediately complained that he didn't need to, but he felt as if he owed it to himself to confirm that the car was actually there and _genuine_ , as much as Vincent apparently was. They were a car and its owner disappeared fifteen years hence, and Sebastian had been thoroughly assured of their destruction in his youth. No one could blame him, surely, for just wanting to _check_.

He looked around. Vincent was still nowhere to be seen. At least a car couldn't talk to him or act as if it wanted anything from him. What harm could it do?

Sebastian approached gingerly, taking care that the grocery bags didn't rustle. The Testarossa was a two-seater, and from where he was both seats appeared to be empty, but he feared that Vincent would hear and _rise up from the depths of the car_ or something like that. Now that he'd seen the other man come back, there seemed to be no guarantee that the car would adhere to the rules of this world. It was too spotless for him to think that it would, and that made him even more anxious, but he pressed on and soon stood a mere two steps away from the Testarossa's frame.

He leaned to the side without taking another step, narrowing his eyes as he peered into the driver's seat. Both it and the passenger side were empty. Nor could he see possessions of any kind - no bags, perceivable luggage, cigarette packets or whatever. When he tiptoed to lean in further he also saw that the carpets beneath both seats were spotlessly clean. It was like Vincent to take good care of his car, but when he had been alive there had been _limits_ to how clean he could be - he might have dusted out the carpets every night, but the red fabric would still have the occasional damp footprint, a speck of dirt or a stray leaf stuck to it during the daytime. All that was just a consequence of walking around, of business, of _living_.  
He thought that Vincent had taken the time to clean the Testarossa while he'd been out, but who knew? Maybe waking up from the dead precluded him from having such things as footprints. A funny sort of advantage, if at all.

Sebastian glanced past the roof of the car, seeing how the surface gleamed. The car was every bit as pristine and beautiful as when he'd first seen it, or whenever Vincent had finished taking care of it for the day. Everything was exactly as he remembered, down to that soft, inviting aura the Testarossa had appeared to develop in his presence, coyly beckoning him in for a drive down sun-streaked roads during Sunday afternoons -

\- when Vincent had still been _there_.

He circled around the car and paused next to the passenger side, staring down at the door. The handle was just beneath the slats that ran along the side, he knew. And even though the car was empty and more than likely locked, he had the urge to _reach_ for it, to _feel_ it press against his fingers, even if the door did not yield. It may have been a long time ago, but Sebastian had been made to feel welcome around this car for a fair length of time, and old habits died far too hard. His fingertips twitched to touch over the Testarossa and he nearly gave in, raising his hand towards it, and then -

( _let's go home_ )

\- and then -

"..."

Sebastian turned away. He hurried to the front door, the plastic bags digging uncomfortably into his wrist as he fumbled for the keys, and as soon as he was inside he nigh slammed the door behind him with bitter force. Even as he put away the groceries and withdrew upstairs, he kept his gaze away from the windows, lest he get another glimpse of the car.

He wasn't going to be doing that again in a hurry. The years had not softened his anguish.

He wondered why he kept on doing this to himself.

Vincent did not leave that day, nor after that. Sebastian spared the outside only a single glance for the rest of that day; he looked out of the window as he prepared for an early night, the turmoil in his heart having become too great for him to concentrate on his work. He saw Vincent sitting at the driver's seat, his arms apparently crossed, head tilted back as if he were sleeping - his hand paused for a second longer than intended, but eventually Sebastian turned away and shut the curtains tightly, not wanting to give himself away. When he woke up in the morning the Testarossa was still there, and from then on, Sebastian resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to live with the other's presence for a while.

And he did. For _days_ on end they co-existed without armistice, Sebastian hidden indoors and Vincent making himself comfortable outside. No, he didn't like it. He didn't even like _thinking_ about the car or Vincent.  
But the latter had his ways of reminding Sebastian that they were there, every time he felt as if he could put them out of his mind.

The trouble with this whole arrangement was that Vincent _never stayed still_. He hadn't attempted to talk to Sebastian again since that attempt at getting a light, but he was always going for a walk elsewhere, looking after the Testarossa, or residing in it in ways the other man could not predict. Sebastian never witnessed him walking away from his car, so had no idea where he went to during those times, but he'd seen the empty car enough that he knew Vincent moved around perfectly fine by day. One night Sebastian had gotten up for a drink and checked the outside on his way, only to see that the parking space was empty; he tossed and turned for the rest of that night and looked again at dawn to see Vincent sitting on the hood of the Testarossa as if nothing had happened. So wherever he was going, it wasn't far, and he was coming and going entirely as he pleased. Sebastian thought it most likely that the other was stocking up on his earthly vices - the occasional bottle of vodka in his hand, or the all the cigarettes he smoked had to come from somewhere.

Sometimes Vincent was sat in the driver's seat and staring straight ahead. Sometimes he was stretched out as far as he could manage, legs resting on the passenger side; sometimes he was outside and examining the car closely, his blue-mottled hand nevertheless moving in familiar ways along the metal. And very often, Vincent had the windows rolled down and the radio on _just_ loud enough that Sebastian could hear it if the TV wasn't on in the living room.

He sang, too. Vincent's voice had become hoarser from whatever pains he had suffered in the past, but he could still carry a fine tune, fading in and out in that old, familiar, breezy way he'd used to.

It was unbearable.

 _So I'm with you, baby,_  
_you were more, I've seen no more._  
_You were right to enslave me,_  
_I think you would_ _’_ _ve made it..._

Then there was _this_ song, which was completely unfamiliar to Sebastian; probably a song of Vincent's own creation. He would have thought it a decent song, too, had he heard it in any other circumstances than an undead man singing it outside his window. Much of it was sung quietly, and sometimes he seemed to mumble inaudibly through the lyrics, but the melody of it was always clear.

 _You were right, you made it,_  
_you were all right..._

He always sang that one very tenderly and always as if he pitied Sebastian for something. But at the same time, the words did not seem wholly directed towards him, and even if they had been, Sebastian didn't think that he was in a state to reflect upon them. What good was _pity_ to him, anyway? What could Vincent possibly pity him for - refusing to engage with him? If that was the case, Vincent was suffering from a severe case of unwarranted self-importance on top of being undead, and Sebastian had no time for that.

He did wonder why his neighbours never objected. If people didn't find it bewildering that a bright red sportscar had appeared overnight in this quiet neighbourhood, not to mention the occasional wax-pale man in a varsity jacket hanging around it (or _on_ it, rather), he had no idea what they would find surprising. The contrast of the Testarossa next to his own smaller, plain black car was especially jarring, and all of this should have merited _at the very least_ a quizzical glance from those who lived nearby. But as the sun rose and set, and the days passed by, Sebastian neither heard nor faced any such thing.

Then again, Sebastian had never been a social man in the first place. Maybe it was rich of him to expect people to come up to him _now_ and talk about odd things that were happening around the place.  
They were talking about it behind his back, for all he knew, and he might just have been left out of the conversation. Or maybe someone _had_ come up to talk to Vincent. Sebastian didn't know and did nothing to find out, either. His instincts objected that it was in his best interests to be _sure_ ; there was an occasional spark of fear in him that no matter what the neighbours might have thought of him or Vincent or the Testarossa, the alternative - that they didn't think _anything_ at all - would be immeasurably more horrific.

But then he would turn away from the window, smoke a cigarette or turn to his music, and cold logic would settle back in within minutes to give him much-needed relief. Sebastian had never been a practitioner of true philosophy, and did not like to dwell on frivolous metaphysical questions about the nature of reality or knowledge, but that wasn't to say that he wasn't good at rationalizing his way through life. Over the course of four days he sat and consulted his reason, and it advised him thus: if something was real for him, it was a waste of time to obsess over whether it _actually_ was real or not. For _some reason_ he perceived that Vincent and his Testarossa were parked outside of his house. They didn't seem to be going away any time soon, so he would eventually have to deal with them. He could approach them as if they existed in reality, or he could approach them as if he would a vivid dream. He'd had plenty of practice with both. What mattered was that _he_ faced them, and whatever anyone else thought about that was of no relevance. Sebastian mulled over this and decided that it made sense. He would have to think more about the method of approach - he was hardly going to just march outside and demand answers - but he felt better knowing that a confrontation was inevitable. At least he could prepare for it now.

But damn it all - he _did_ wish that he had someone to talk to.  
He hadn't felt that way in a long time and it made him feel bad about himself. All the more reason to figure out, as quickly as he could, what Vincent wanted from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap this chapter took a long time get out.  
> I blame my end-of-year exams/essays, then a period of extreme unease that occurred in between. Some not-very-happy things happened to me in May and that threw me off balance for a while. Hopefully _Swansong_ should progress with more ease from now on, it's such a detail-heavy fic.
> 
> * St-Ouen is a commune in Paris. It is home to the biggest flea market in the city.  
> * Sebastian's music teacher is a combination of multiple early-life influences in his career. The most obvious of those is his real-life brother, Noël Akchoté; he does not exist in this tale, but I feel that it is important to acknowledge him in any way that I am able. He will make appearances in future stories.  
> * Sebastian's teacher introduced him to a Minimoog, I believe. It cost about $1600 dollars in 1974 money. Not something one takes casually to a school music room, but as mentioned above, this man is kind of an amalgamation of several of Sebastian's early influences and thus his trust in Sebastian is proportionately strong. At least that's what I'm trying to get across.  
> * It was indeed a Monday on the 24th of January, 1994.  
> * ' _Ko si vi?_ ' is Serbo-Croatian for 'who are you?'. It is formal. This is also in line with Sebastian's struggles re: the French T-V distinction.  
> * Testarossa interiors vary in colour. Sometimes they are all red, sometimes all beige, sometimes a mixture.  
> * Kenny Loggins's 'Footloose' is playing the first time around in the car.  
> * Sebastian stumbles over the 'marvellous'-' _merveilleuse_ ' difference. As a multilingual I have always felt that I was not so much embarrassed about unintentional code-switching as the times when I couldn't quite control my pronunciation, making a word come out sounding wrong or extremely unnatural in an otherwise comprehensible sentence.  
> * 'Boštjan' is a common diminutive of 'Sebastian/Sebastijan' in Slovenian. I've assumed that either a similar diminutive is used in Serbo-Croatian, or that Sebastian's name was not strictly influenced by any one particular language. The important thing is that 'Bastien'-variations are not _uncommon_ across languages; 'Bastien' is French, but German has 'Basti **a** n' also, to take another example.  
> * Mozart wrote _Bastien und Bastienne_ when he was twelve. As comic operas/mini-operas go, it doesn't have the most complicated story or anything - but I think we can forgive that. Because, you know, he was twelve years old and a genius. It still makes for surprisingly good listening.  
>  * '12.07.94' should be December 7th 1994. I think that is the American way of writing dates. Just clarifying for any other Brits who might be around, or for those who read dates in a different order in general.  
> * That was my way of working in 'Odd Look', the second major influence in this fic aside from 'Nightcall'. You may regard it as an ode to Sebastian or the Testarossa as it fits. 
> 
> Feedback/comments/messages give me the motivation to write. Please tell me what you thought of this chapter here or [on my Tumblr](http://kimbk.tumblr.com/) \- I should have the third one up soon, too.


	3. Am Feierabend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to [@gavingruchy](http://gavingruchy.tumblr.com) for the translations into Spanish.  
> Also to everyone who waited so patiently for this chapter to emerge. It is a record 25,000+ words and was written amidst a period of total chaos in my life, as well as a EDM fanfic writing project (at [@akchotesuggestion](http://akchotesuggestion.tumblr.com)) that began in late July. Thank you, all, and please enjoy.

**Swansong (Chapter 03) _\- 'Am Feierabend'_**

*****

The most valuable observations Sebastian made during the earlier days of their acquaintance concerned the tripartite of Vincent's relationships with other people. Much of the relationships his schoolmates formed with others failed to interest Sebastian - but once he had invested his time in someone, he certainly didn't mind _watching_ from afar. He was more glad about having a front-row seat in Vincent's life, which was rather more bustling than his, than he acknowledged. It was like having a small society of his own to peer into and learn the rules of, and though he hadn't started observing the other boy for those ends, what he did see later served as valuable lessons in his life.

Vincent seemed to have _many_ friends, or at the very least, he was on good terms with a _lot_ of people in and out of school. Sebastian had noticed this even before they talked for the second time; not minutes after blowing off the teacher who'd been scolding him, Vincent had raised his hand all of a sudden, and Sebastian (keeping out of sight) had witnessed a boy wearing the school's football uniform run up to him for a high-five. There was no apparent occasion for this and the boy was gone as quickly as he'd come. And this was daily life for Vincent; during his time with the other boy, Sebastian saw a great deal of those micro-encounters taking place, most of which had no deep purpose or intent. Many people, girls and boys alike, seemed to have _something_ to say to Vincent, and he answered them all. Watching this presented a kind of culture shock for Sebastian, who had kept to himself for most of his life - having missed out on the greater community spirit he might have enjoyed in Serbia, had he been raised there - and distrusted much of casual contact. He'd never appreciated before the kind of awareness Vincent possessed.

Those were just the _casual_ encounters. Over time, it emerged that aside from being a member of the drama club, Vincent had lettered in football the year before. He wasn't active in the latter any more, but Sebastian had the chance to spot him a few times out on the field, varsity jacket flung open as he ran and laughed alongside several other boys. He never had a uniform on while at least two of the others did; they were presumably the boys that he had been teammates with at some point. He always cut a striking figure, his standing poise alone tall and powerful in the sunlight, the wind ruffling hard at his hair. And aside from school, there were the people Vincent met during his jobs or numerous errands - _they_ consisted a different category altogether. The summer holidays had to come along before Sebastian was invited to hear the other's experiences in that sphere.

Vincent had _plenty_ of enemies as well. Most of the people he clashed with were those outside of school, but there were a few students who disliked him, too. Some of the teammates he'd run with the year before resented Vincent for still wearing his varsity jacket (they felt that he no longer deserved it, now that he wasn't in the sport) and he often became involved in other people's fights because he didn't tolerate injustice. Sebastian had experienced mixed feelings about this to begin with: he'd figured early on that he wasn't _okay_ with Vincent getting hurt for any reason, the morality of fighting aside. Being injured while trying to set things right was unfortunate, but compulsive fighting seemed like carelessness.

But Vincent proved himself as wise about conflicts as he could be; he knew when to _withdraw_ , and Sebastian thus never had cause to see him beaten up nor his beloved car anything other than pristine. Sometimes his jacket would look a little crumpled at the edges and his jeans would be stained with dirt, and Vincent would carry himself during those times with a well-practiced pride - but those moments inspired _confidence_ in him, not concern or dismay. It helped that he wasn't into _organized_ conflict, either. Vincent had mentioned once that there were gangs in the area, but said mention had been in entirely negative terms, and he hadn't been able to provide much detail. Sebastian took this to mean that the other had no interest nor involvement with any gangs whatsoever, and in fact was doing his utmost best to keep away from them; Vincent was intent on not treating real life like fiction, despite turning out to be somewhat of a film fanatic, and that was of great relief to Sebastian. The one time he saw Vincent with notable injuries, he hadn't had a gang encounter as much as he'd walked in on a bunch of cruel-minded youths, as he recollected later on:

"I was driving into school and thinking I'd be early for once when I saw _those kids_ ," he crushed out his cigarette and leaned back in disgust. "they had this black cat driven into a corner, you know? All of them were carrying sticks or whatever. And I might have not been around for long, but I knew that cat wasn't going to make it out of there if I didn't do something. So I stopped at the side of the street and ran out, I think they heard the door slamming because they all started running off, none of them even looked back at me. So I don't know their faces and don't know where they come from, which is a real shame, because I'd have loved to see them punished if I couldn't do it myself. I picked up the cat, scrawny little thing he was, and as soon as he was in my arms the ungrateful bastard clawed the shit out of me, look," Sebastian saw. (And winced.) The other's arms were scored with long red scratches running all the way down both forearms. "he'd have been running amok in my Testarossa if I hadn't had the idea to stick him in my backpack for the ride. Took him to the shelter two miles away from here, it's no-kill, and they helped me clean up and took him in and said he's probably going to be fine. Only that I should watch _myself_ , in case I end up with a raging case of cat scratch fever in one to three weeks' time. So if you don't see me around then, you know why. Heroism has no reward."

"You did a very good thing," Sebastian assured him softly. For once he took the initiative and patted Vincent's shoulder first, and it was only there because he didn't want to risk touching his arm and hurting him more. Vincent looked at him, silver hair glinting, and grinned wide.

"I take that back. _This_ is a reward," he briefly brushed over the back of Sebastian's hand. "I _love_ compliments."

(He did not end up with cat scratch fever. But people looked at him funny for a while.)

But divorced from the binary of friends or enemies - or perhaps, arising from them both together - were Vincent's romances. This was the last thing about him that the younger boy became used to, and it wasn't because Sebastian shared the same impulses the other had whenever he winked at a girl who caught his eye or flirted with someone. He couldn't _avoid_ knowing, that was all. Whenever Vincent found a new flame, Sebastian knew it without having to see them, because the rides back home became the only time of the day that the boys saw or talked to each other. Even the locker notes faltered during those times, communicating only daily greetings and the hours Vincent was available.

It wasn't that he felt neglected. No matter how many people wanted him around, Vincent was always able to allot Sebastian a certain length of time out of his day, and never failed to keep to it. So if anything, Vincent's timekeeping skills were something he could _learn_ from.  
But it was just as well that in school, where Sebastian was in a position to observe, Vincent never went further than flirting with girls and sharing the occasional kisses. Outside of school he was noted to be more adventurous, but in turn, Sebastian never delved too deep in that direction because he didn't think any of _that_ was his business. Yet there was the persistent unease that perhaps he _would_ have been more bothered about it, had Vincent dated more freely within the confines of their school; was it jealousy he'd felt, then, even that early on?

It probably was. For Sebastian _did_ feel an affection towards him, just as he had adored the postman who always reacted with surprised delight when he saw that Sebastian and his mother were back in Belgrade, or the elderly white-bearded pâtissier who ran a bakery down the street from their Paris flat, or the beautiful and everlasting David Bowie.  
That kind of affection generated jealousy, too. Not that he recognized it as anything more than _missing_ Vincent.

There was little point in recounting just _who_ had adored the older boy, aside from him, only because there had been so many. It wasn't long between Sebastian's initial observation that Vincent was somewhat of a flirt (to understate _greatly_ ) and his completely losing track of who the other was seeing at any given point. Vincent flowed alongside and against his many romances as if he had been born to love - that was the best summary of it. Why, he was so attuned to his romances that he could _end_ them with nothing but the utmost grace; despite the amount of breakups he must have been through, remarkably few people bore him a grudge on that matter.

Sebastian had seen him in the throes of a messy breakup only once, and even then Vincent had found a way to solve his conundrum. He'd been in the music room when it happened - this had been an _actual_ lesson, too, as opposed to his after-school experiments with the synth - and his teacher had asked him to fetch a cased instrument, a flute or something like that, from the soundproofed practice rooms next door. So he'd gone to search for the instrument, having absolutely no luck finding it whatsoever in the mess of old music sheets, empty drawstring bags, dusty shelves of videotapes and cassettes that those practice rooms all seemed to consist of, when out of the window of the one he was in he heard a familiar voice. "- tell you, Juanita, I know I've been neglectful recently and no, it's not _your_ fault in the slightest-"

He bolted up and hurried over to the window. Then he thought better of it and pressed himself against the wall, hiding as best as he could while he peered outside. Vincent was there, walking with - no, rather, _following_ a tall dark-haired girl who was coming around the corner. They hadn't reached the music room yet, but whatever argument they were having was loud enough that Sebastian and everyone nearby could hear it. "What does it _matter_?" she kept on saying, cutting him off every few seconds. (It was evident that they'd been at this for a while, she looked exasperated.) "I'm asking you, what does it matter?"

"It matters a whole lot! - I mean, you can't seriously mean that I should just _leave_ you and walk off like nothing ever happened, right? Just because I was late last night?" By the look on her face, Sebastian suspected that she actually would have considered that acceptable, though for what reason any of this was happening he still couldn't tell. "come, let's please talk about this - somewhere private, maybe in the car, Juanita-"

"Juanita _nothing_! I'm not going anywhere near that _haunted car_ of yours, ever again."

This actually managed to provoke a look of either hurt or offense from Vincent's part, though before either he or Juanita could elaborate, a laughing girl passed them by. "How goes it, Vinco?" she hollered behind them, obviously knowing where this was going or having witnessed a similar situation in the past. Vincent made an impatient gesture, not looking back.

"It goes well," he called, and let the others laugh while he returned to Juanita's case. By now she and Vincent had the passive attention of at least a dozen people in the area and it was obviously making her quite uncomfortable; she began to turn and walk away, her pace quicker than before. "all right, fine, we won't do that. But is taking you _anywhere_ going to change things for the better, is there anything I can do to ask you to reconsider?"

"Oh, none whatsoever. We're done."

Vincent's long legs had no problem keeping up. "Really? Babe, what about everything that happened between us? Right from the moment I confessed that you were the only one who made first-year French bearable? This land of freedom and happiness is only that if you speak English, we both realized that, but we got to speak a different language altogether and _we_ sure were happy. You and I, _chica,_ we were a story."

This had no effect on Juanita. She merely scoffed, crossing her arms as some girls in their PE outfits filed past. " _Words!_ Just words, nothing more. I'm tired of them, especially coming from you - and that goes for _any_ language. There has never been anything between us."

"Sure, nothing at all, not even air. Not after how we kissed last Friday!"

She made a disgusted noise and carried on walking as soon as the girls were gone. Vincent followed her, and Sebastian carried on watching, despite knowing that he really shouldn't. "Juanita," Vincent was coaxing her sweetly now, smiles playing about his mouth. " _Chiquita, mamita, bonita muchacha_ , I’ve always thought you loved _un poco picoso_ -"

"- _Gordo, a poco, como si no lo hubiera o_ _ído antes_ -"

"- but if milady wishes then I won’t do it again, cross my _heart_ and kiss my _elbow_ -"

"- _Déjame en paz Vinco_ , go rub your filthy face somewhere else, maybe your _car_ if you love it so much -"

At that point three boys in ill-fitting soccer uniforms hurried past the window, and Sebastian didn't quite manage to hear what happened immediately afterwards. But whatever Vincent or someone else nearby had done, she was rather enraged: she slapped Vincent damn hard. From the force of it, Sebastian could only assume that Vincent had made some kind of obscene gesture, or that one of the people watching had goaded her on - the latter seemed more likely, the shocked look on her face betrayed that she'd been carried away somehow, perhaps she had never meant to hit him at all. But Vincent played it cool. He staggered back a few genuine steps - then _kept on going_ , raising his head (Sebastian grimaced at his reddened cheek) to show an expression so _dramatically_ hurt that no one could possibly take it seriously.

"Alas!" he choked out, his hand pressing over his chest for maximum effect. " _ridi, Pagliacci, ridi!"_

Then he fell down in a well-practiced swoon, sinking to the ground with arms outstretched. The students nearby hooted with laughter, whatever tension there might have been breaking instantly; Juanita looked down at him as if she didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but she certainly didn't seem angry any more. After a moment she sighed and bent her knees to offer Vincent her hand - he immediately grasped it and planted a noisy kiss upon it, grinning - and then he got up and they walked away together to resume their talks in private. Whatever came of that, Sebastian saw no more of it, but he could infer that they had ended things peacefully. He never saw them together again, but they both seemed at peace and the incident was soon forgotten by all.

All but the ones involved, of course, and Sebastian.  
He chanced to bring up the incident shortly afterwards, and Vincent _was_ a little embarrassed about it, but not so much because Sebastian had seen him being hit as much as he worried that he'd come across as ungentlemanly. "She was right to go," he insisted over sandwiches and lemonade; they were sitting at the bench outside of the library after school, three days after the breakup had occurred. They ought to have been heading back by this time, but Vincent hadn't managed to finish his lunch properly that day, and Sebastian had only _then_ felt as if he could ask the other about what had happened. "it's a bad time to date at the moment, I've been unusually busy and I never had the time to take her out. Besides, I annoyed her to pieces. Still do, in fact. I can tell."

"It's not because I..."

Vincent dismissed the concern with a wave of his hand. "Nothing to do with picking you up whatsoever. In fact, I could stand for that drive to be longer, considering how everything _else_ won't give me a break. No, it really was me. I'll spare you the details," seeing that Sebastian still looked unsure, he shook his head firmly and rested his hand on his shoulder. "I know what you're about to say, that that's not an excuse to hit anyone. Or to break up like how we did. Maybe that's true and I shan't challenge that, but I guess: I can see _why_ she reacted the way she did, which is fair enough. Better we're apart and happy, than together and making each other miserable. Not to mention everyone else around us."

"You're pretty blasé about it all."

"Comes with practice."

"What, do most breakups go like this for you? ('Not _most_ ,' Vincent clarified hastily.) Then what's it like when everything's as civil as it can be?"

"Well, I don't _know_ , Bastien. Everyone's got a different idea of what 'civil' means. And I reckon the absolute ideal is never breaking up at all, at least not willingly on either side, but I've never had a relationship like that. But then again _I'm_ nobody's windfall, of that I'm sure," he took a tall swig out of his lemonade. "I guess I _am_ waiting for the right person, but it wouldn't kill me if I never found them, or anything. I don't even know who the right person would _be_ , all I have in mind is a series of dreams."

"Oh?"

"Honestly. If I could have anybody in the world - if I could snap my fingers in the air to turn everyone's heads, if I could grin wide and point to anyone in the world and say _come here you_ \- I sure wouldn't pick anyone I've dated so far. I mean, _whoa._ I'd be spoilt for choice then, wouldn't I?" Vincent leaned back, the bottle cradled on his lap as he lightly ran his right thumb over the nails of the same hand. (His nails were very neatly trimmed, Sebastian noticed.) "... hmm. Uma Thurman, I dare hope. Pat Benatar. Hell, I'd go for Richard Gere any day. Why not? Men are beautiful, so many of them are, and it's a shame that a lot of men I know would probably think that was an insult. Love should be allowed. That's what I genuinely think. Maybe I've only felt love a few times, maybe love feels a _little_ different every time, but I know it's generally a pretty good feeling. And you know, I'm all for it, no matter who you might love."

Sebastian was silent all the way through. He wasn't surprised that Vincent would talk so lushly of love, but he was still filled with wonder whenever the other did so, just because _he_ wasn't used to opening up like that. His lack of comment certainly wasn't because he _disapproved_ \- but silence by definition did a poor job of conveying such things, as demonstrated when he glanced to the side to see that Vincent looked _very_ uncomfortable all of a sudden. He'd clearly let on more than he'd ever intended.

"... Maybe one day I'll find the person who I can _sustain_ that feeling with," he said, putting a hasty end to his speech, and tilted his head back to finish the rest of his lemonade. He was outwardly cool and collected, but his hand shook _just_ a little as he raised the bottle to his lips, and when he was done he placed the empty bottle down with more force than he seemed to have meant. Sebastian was confused for only a moment before he realized - _oh,_ he thought, _it's not like that, Vincent_ , and inwardly winced as he tried to figure out how to unravel the misunderstanding. (The world Sebastian entered into as a man cared less about such things, but during this point in time, it wasn't _that_ simple.) He too was an admirer of how people looked, regardless of their gender, but he felt as if being upfront about it would make the other boy withdraw even more. Vincent's attitude to love wasn't something to simplify with a pat on the back and a few words along the lines of _I think you're perfect just the way you are_ \- or something old and tired like that - even though Sebastian genuinely _was_ fine with it.

Vincent had probably heard that one a dozen times before, anyway. If he was still nervous, it meant that those words had contributed little to his confidence on the matter. Sebastian would have better luck simply responding in a manner alike to the other's thoughts; Vincent needed someone to speak his language, which was a feeling the younger boy understood well. "It's a good thing you have high standards," he said. "because it seems to me that you have them as a measure of _what_ you value in people, not to compare who's better than who. Am I right?"

"Yeah."

Sebastian picked up the empty lemonade bottle, skimmed the label - and looked up at Vincent. "Maybe it's a bit too late to say this for the people who came before, but when you're older - richer, most likely, maybe _famous_ , I wouldn't be at all surprised if that happened to you-" and he genuinely meant that, too, just thinking about it made his heart feel warm. "- what you told me, I think you ought to tell whoever you might like by then as well. He or she would be delighted, I'm sure."

Vincent smiled at that. The tension went out of his shoulders. It was a relief for him and Sebastian both, it seemed. "I've had thoughts like that. It's nice to entertain them every once in a while," he said. "but they're just thoughts, you know? I can barely handle the idea of _actually_ getting old and having to be all proper. You have to promise me this, Bastien, if I ever _do_ become a rich old stuck-up bastard, I want you to kick my ass over it."

"Metaphorically or physically?"

Vincent pretended to think about it for a moment. "Call it a sliding scale," he said, and laughed. Sebastian joined in, too. All was right between them again.

But Vincent's truest affections lay elsewhere. Not in a fellow human being, either. Sebastian had figured as much because of his scent, as odd as that might have sounded. In the best of times, Vincent actually smelled rather sweet - a little like apple schnapps and vanilla, which complimented the leather of his Testarossa. He used the car freshener to match, too. Vincent might have _done_ and _said_ plenty to get along with other people and to help make his living, but he was never quite as in sync with anyone as he was with his car. It even emerged, soon enough, that he wore his varsity jacket because he felt himself to match 'her' in it; the Testarossa _was_ his life's companion, and he showed it devotion of an intensity that Sebastian had never witnessed before, not even amongst people. When he later became a regular at Vincent's home (and vice-versa), he would sit by the porch every evening and bear witness to the other's car-cleaning routine: through watching Vincent shake out the carpets, check the tire pressure, and wipe the exterior clean until 'she' gleamed, Sebastian was constantly exposed to the constancy of love. Having moved around so often in his youth, he'd never quite allowed himself to be attached to mere possessions - the concept that Vincent could care for a _vehicle_ in such a loving manner was one that genuinely expanded his mind.

But it wasn't that Sebastian doubted how much he cared. For there was actual, _tangible_ love to be learnt from Vincent's routine. "There you are, sweetheart," he would say every time, bending down to kiss the roof of the car softly. "my lucky charm, _ma moiti_ _é_ \- my darling, beautiful girl!"

Sebastian always smiled at that. If he stopped to think too hard about the relationship between Vincent and the car, he _would_ find himself mildly bemused that it was possible at all - why, there was almost no difference between the way Vincent acted towards the Testarossa sometimes and a couple newly about to be wed. But it wasn't long before _he_ began to refer to the car as 'her' or 'she' as well, thinking of it as allowing the term _la voiture_ to inch back into his life, and for Sebastian knowing just how special the Testarossa was to Vincent attributed a particular significance to their first encounter. Vincent barely even let his close friends and previous partners ride in the car, but he'd approached Sebastian, helped him - Vincent had _shared_ precious hospitality with him at personal expense, even though he had known nothing of him before that January evening. It was good to feel so trusted, even if Sebastian didn't fully know where it was coming from yet.

He did not think that he would find out for a while. No two people were important to Vincent in the exact same way. But he enjoyed the conversations with Vincent where they found out more about each other, and he loved to ride in the Testarossa and drink in the warm, serene atmosphere; because he asked for little more than for those things to continue, there was no urgent need to ask Vincent why he thought Sebastian was so special.

Vincent would tell him in good time, if need be. He had complete faith in that.

*****

(Still, he spent some nights wondering.)

*****

(Who _had_ he been to Vincent?)

\-----

The fifth day of his self-imposed solitude brought forth several surprises, as well as _progress_.

Sebastian woke up at half-eight exactly, looked out of the window, confirmed that Vincent was still resting inside the Testarossa, and went downstairs to make himself breakfast. He had an odd moment of wonder as he was pouring his coffee, surprised that it hadn't taken him long to accept Vincent's presence; he still wasn't so _comfortable_ with it that he felt that he could talk to him, but there was now a curious anticipation accompanying him every time he glanced outside. He wouldn't have thought it during that storm, but against all odds, he had gotten used to Vincent being there - no, he _needed_ Vincent to be there, just to maintain the new status quo. He'd never asked for it, but he was more than happy to work with it, just as long as it didn't change on him again any time soon.

What that implied about his own priorities, he was less willing to accept. He sipped his coffee with a faint disgust and gazed down at the table. He was on one side, an empty chair on the other, and a dollop of butter was melting atop his pancakes.  
He liked to make them soft and fluffy, eaten with only butter or the occasional drip of syrup. At least five or six people had begged him for the recipe in the past, though he'd always refused, under the pretense of guarding an old family mystique. (The secret ingredient was mere malted milk powder, but no one had yet figured it out _because_ it was so simple, and he wanted to keep it that way.) The side of his fork sliced smoothly into the top two layers of pancake; he cut free a morsel and took the fork to his mouth. Delicious, as always.

_You bake even better than I remember..._

Sebastian cradled his forehead in his hand and wondered if Vincent would like some. He had no idea what the other was sustaining himself with out there, but it probably wasn't real food; still, he _was_ entirely capable of eating, though Sebastian didn't know if he needed to eat in the first place. Maybe food was just a luxury to him now. Vincent drank, he knew that, atop or within his Testarossa - he seemed very fond of vodka, another artifact from the past that hadn't changed in the slightest - and he smoked, but again that didn't mean that he _needed_ to do those things in order to carry on.  
It was all very upsetting, and very _wrong_. Sebastian finished his pancakes without enthusiasm, and _didn't_ do the dishes before he went and sat down with his laptop on the sofa. Nothing of much note awaited him in regards to work: he had a request for a remix, and someone had sent him a message asking him if he could look over their work, doubtless considering him more of a producer than a musician. He got that all the time. When he was in a good mood he forwarded those messages to Pedro, and when he wasn't feeling great (or if he was avoiding Pedro, like now) he just ignored them, and later felt a little bad for it. That was just a feeling that characterized his entire existence.

It almost felt a little ridiculous that that emotion was still alive in him, but he supposed that it was better than not feeling anything.

Not that he didn't think that was inevitable.

But he could muse upon that later.  
A fresh email had popped up. He clicked it, skimmed over the contents, and felt the beginnings of a grin twitch the corners of his mouth. And just at the right time, too! He had spent days isolating himself, away from Vincent - and even though that in no way necessitated that he do the same for anyone else or for the rest of his work, he had felt so deeply unsure of himself and his own sanity for the past few days (and he'd had so few friends to begin with) that he'd had almost no human contact for all of that time. Though they mostly saw each other for work and for little else, he and the sender of this email were close enough, and the latter wanted to talk as soon as possible. He quickly typed out a reply in the positive, clicked 'send', and brought up the instant messaging client without waiting for a response. If he knew the other well, he'd skip all the formalities and come straight over, especially when he had important things to discuss - exactly as he had said in the email.

He did not have to wait for long. Sebastian was just done checking his video settings when he came online. It was only polite that he waited until the other initiated conversation. After all, Sebastian had been _summoned_ , and even as the call notification drifted onto his screen he had no idea what the other man wanted to talk to him about - only that he himself was looking forward to talking to an actual living and breathing human being.

"Gaspard," he said, and adjusted the webcam. "it's been a while."

There was a minor lull - a small click, perhaps the other man's webcam or microphone turning on - then there he was, Gaspard Augé, one of his seniors at Ed Banger Records. He was best understood not on his own but irretrievably as part of 'the Justice boys' with another, a certain Xavier de Rosnay, but when Sebastian didn't have to consider his labelmates in terms of _musicality_ he preferred to regard them as separate persons with very different temperaments. Gaspard, especially, had given him a lot of help when he'd been new to the music scene; he was one of the most genuine people Sebastian knew, and because of that he was glad to talk to the man on a regular basis.

"Why," Gaspard spoke up on the other end, his expression warm. He was at home, it seemed, surrounded by records, stacked documents, and a full glass of orange juice was half visible in the foreground. His voice was faint, initially a little tinny. Sebastian turned up the volume on his laptop, Gaspard himself quickly adjusted something, and then he was coming across loud and clear. "good morning, Sebastian, I hadn't expected you'd respond so soon."

"I had to, when I saw that it was from you. I'd have done that even if you weren't going to talk about important things, as you said in your email."

Gaspard laughed. He did that seldom, but it was nice to see it when he did. He had a _lightness_ to his movements that Sebastian didn't think he could replicate in a million years, all soft tossed ringlets and pure serenity - quite unlike himself or even Xavier, who could be rather _pointed_ as a default attitude before anything else. "I'm well flattered to hear that, I can tell you. You are doing well?"

"I am."

"Good to hear. Congratulations on finishing the tour, too! From the reviews I've read, you were absolutely fantastic from start to finish, which is exactly what I'd have expected of you."

Sebastian smiled. A compliment from anyone else in Ed Banger made him as close to pleased as he could get, and coming from Gaspard, it meant a lot. "Thank you. Still kind of recovering from it, myself, if I'm honest. And they've helped me plan another tour _already_ , though I do need a break before I get going again."

"I can understand. That's why I've been able to find you here today, I suppose," then Gaspard folded his hands together, tilting his head. Sebastian's good mood was switched off like a light then, just like that, as soon as he recognized that by the _important things_ Gaspard had mentioned, he'd meant that he wanted to make inquiries _of_ the younger man. "and speaking of tours - Pedro says he asked you to come to Detour?"  
  
_What else did I expect?_  
  
"... Yes, he did."

Sebastian's response was as guarded as it possibly could be. If Pedro had told Gaspard of Sebastian's less-than-polite response to this offer, he would neither have been surprised nor have known how to take the conversation from there. Thankfully, this didn't seem to be the case. "Figures. He said that you were thinking about it. How long ago was that - around a week ago?” Sebastian nodded. "well, _have_ you thought about it? We'd love to have you there!"

"I-I'm not quite decided yet."

Gaspard tilted his head slightly, questioning, indicating that he was to go on. But Sebastian didn't really know how to continue - that _was_ about the level of reflection he had done regarding Detour so far, and thus his indecision really was all that was there to tell. He hadn't even _thought_ about Detour nor his other tour dates, the ones he'd _actually_ planned, after Pedro's call that night; he'd been so stressed about Vincent re-entering his life, and of course there was no way he could explain all of that to Gaspard. What was he to do?

Well - nothing, as it turned out. Sensing the other's hesitation, Gaspard took up the flow. "Come to think of it, when we were discussing this with Pedro we didn't actually pass on any _proper_ material about the festival that he could have given you. I reckon he'll call you again soon (Sebastian's heart verily sank to his stomach at the thought), but if you'd like, I can send you some notes now. Especially about the timetable and who's definitely attending - they haven't printed the posters yet, and no one's officially announced that info. Unless Pedro told you already?"

"No, I wasn't informed," now this _was_ an outlet he could work with. He would be foolish to ignore it. "but I've only been thinking about how the date fits with what I've planned. I haven't had the time to actually ask what the festival's arrangements are, and I really should have, you know? - More information can only help me make up my mind. I'd like the notes, please. "

"No problem at all. _Xavier_?" Gaspard turned to call out of the door. "have you got the timetable for Detour at hand, I want to tell Seb about it."

This reminded Sebastian of what Xavier was _like_. _I don't think that's a good idea,_ he thought in a flash, but it was too late for him to voice it. "What for," he could hear Xavier hollering from outside of the room. "he won't come!"

There was an awkward silence on the line. (Gaspard looked _mortified_.) When it became clear that Xavier genuinely cared none for fetching said timetable, Gaspard rose from his seat and looked back towards the door. "I'm sorry about this," he murmured quietly, his cheeks pink with embarrassment. Sebastian nodded quietly and raised a hand to acknowledge the apology; Gaspard took this as a cue to get the timetable himself, which he did so with only a few seconds' absence and a great deal of awkwardness.

"Here it is. I'm really sorry, again," he said as he set down the papers in front of the laptop. "Xavier is..."

"I'm well aware. It's all right."

"I really should have-"

"It's fine, Gaspard."

Gaspard gave him an uneasy smile, and did not try to press the matter again. Not that it'd have done either of them much good. Sebastian had not yet been part of Ed Banger for five years, and he wasn't yet able to do _anything_ right. as far as the now-veteran Xavier was concerned. Sebastian didn't appreciate this very much, but at the same time, he never complained about it - he would have done so without hesitation if he had _disliked_ Xavier or vice versa, but despite everything: Xavier was fair. He had to hand that to him. _Everyone_ got the newcomer's treatment, alternating praise and a healthy amount of scolding, all topped with rather crass but ultimately accurate suggestions for improvement. Sebastian had known several people exactly like that. Such a personality type was what his own music teacher at high school had possessed, and he thought that he himself was often that way with amateur musicians and producers. He wasn't in a position to point fingers at Xavier, and he knew that well, even if others did not. "So for the festival - how many people are coming and where are we meant to be?" he asked, easing them both past the subject.

"Good question. I'm going to send this to you as a reference, so excuse me typing for a while. ("Not a problem," Sebastian said.) There might still be one or two changes depending on who says that they'll come by the deadline," he paused there, letting the not-so-subtle message sink in - please respond quickly, Sebastian, if you're okay with the idea at all - and began to type as he spoke. "but for most part we should be solid. Right. There are thirty artists, but four stages: City Hall East, West, and South stages, and the City Hall Plaza stage. On average, there are seven to eight artists scheduled at each stage throughout the day, and we're at the City Hall South. That's us and the Ed Banger family both."

"You headline."

"That's right. We don't come on until ten past ten, and you're halfway through, so you'd be performing sometime... sometime around six or seven," he stopped in his typing and ticked off something on the timetable. "yes, that's right. Here's the thing," there Gaspard folded his hands together and gazed at the screen. "they want _you_ to finish off the Ed Banger set. You're on for a good long two-and-a-half hours, and if you come, they would like it if you could take over the _entire_ last hour and bring it to a close as only you can do."

"What exactly does it mean to bring _anything_ to a close as 'only I can do'?"

Gaspard laughed. "Only you would know that best. Maybe it's difficult to explain it, especially, because we're weeks away from Detour and we aren't even in the middle of music-making at the moment. But if you insist on a description-" he gazed ahead, his long fingers tapping lightly on the keyboard once and lying still. "- I'm reaching here, but your musical philosophy, it is _different_. Xavier and I fell into music almost as an accident, and for most part there's not something _profound_ we want to talk about with what we do. I actually don't think that's too different to what Pedro or Bertrand or Mehdi do - what comes first is the fun and feeling. You, though," Sebastian sat up a little straighter, almost without noticing it himself. "I feel like your work is always purposeful towards _something_. We like to rile up crowds and keep it going; you want the crowd to get going, and _while_ they're at it, think about what you're telling them. Is that about right or am I completely incorrect?"

It was neither. Sebastian hadn't thought of his own music like that before. But it was true that he made music largely for _himself_ , which he supposed counted as 'purposeful towards something'. "I kind of get what you mean."

"I think that's what the festival people think, too. The Ed Banger family's set is... well, _long_. It's easily going to be a three or four-hours long venture, and I don't think anybody else can send it off with the bang that it deserves like you can."

Still, Sebastian hesitated. Gaspard picked up on it, too. "There's still time," he said gently, relieving the younger man of the duty to answer him at all. "and you will be welcomed and celebrated there, I guarantee it, never mind what _Xavier_ said about it," he put unusual stress to that part. Sebastian was oddly grateful. "if nothing else, we'd like to see one of our youngest and fastest-rising stars and spoil him a bit, considering all the amazing work he puts out. There you have it. _That's_ our true intention, right there. There's also plenty of room for negotiations within the set if you decide that you're interested. _Please_ think about it, Sebastian."

Gaspard had a way of cheering him up, especially when he became so free with his words. The knot in his chest didn't quite ease, but he managed to smile just a tiny bit. "That's more like it," Gaspard exclaimed with delight - then his expression turned playfully firm. "I for one have been _unbelievably_ bitter that I didn't get to see you on tour, so you best provide another chance, just for my sake."

With the way things were, it was likely that he would have to let Gaspard down. But he tried not to think about it, because the man had been so kind already - he didn't think he was as hung up about the set being in Los Angeles any more, half as much as the fact that _he just had no idea what to do_ about Vincent and the Testarossa outdoors. They hadn't moved in nearly a week and it seemed likely that they could well sit there for _months_ if they had to, not to mention follow him if he went off touring.

An absolute disaster. He couldn't tour with _that_ hanging over his head. That wasn't even a Detour problem, that was for his entire future activity from this point onwards. And maybe all of this conflict had showed on Sebastian's face, for Gaspard opened his mouth to speak again - only to be interrupted by a sharp click from out of view. "Xavier," he clarified as Sebastian craned his head, brought out of his contemplations by the noise. "he's gone to visit his family, he won't be back for a while. And speaking of Xavier, I'm halfway done with the timetable and notes, can you hold on until I'm done? Won't take more than a few minutes."

"Oh, absolutely."

Gaspard typed fast enough, so he maybe only had about four or five minutes to wait with full formatting, if that. Sebastian watched him quietly as he worked, going back over all the older man had said to him; what he'd said about Sebastian's _musical philosophy_ repeated nonstop in his mind, because he couldn't fathom what Gaspard could have meant by it. Sebastian's methodology wasn't complicated. If he experimented, it was for his own sake, and if a song felt a certain way, it was a reflection of how he'd felt and not that way for anybody else.  
Funny, that. If anything, a musical philosophy was the description he'd have given to the Justice duo. _Justice_ was a word that seemed to lend itself perfectly to such a concept, and even if the word wasn't significant, their _imagery_ certainly seemed to be.

Sebastian gazed at the large cross necklace that dangled around the other's neck. It looked heavy - it _was_ heavy, he'd once had the chance to lift it out of the way for Gaspard when the pendant had dangled too precariously over a raclette grill. Its heaviness justified its presence. It was one of the fashion items that defined the person Gaspard was, both in style and (Sebastian was quite sure of this) morality alike; nothing was stopping him from wearing a small, light crucifix like so many other people of the faith did, but he persisted. He'd perform a kind of ritual with it with Xavier just before shows, lifting the pendant so they leaned forwards and kissed with it between their lips - but it wasn't there just for that ritual's sake, nor was it merely a fashion statement, and if there was a complicated story behind the pendant then Sebastian did not know of it.

So he supposed he and Gaspard were similar, then, in that they both carried a weight. Sebastian never showed his because it was no one's business; Gaspard was only to happy to display that weight, however, even though his didn't have to be anyone else's business either. Sebastian hadn't been there for Justice's debut proper, but he had long since caught up on the all the press that had followed it, on the time everyone had asked him why they'd called themselves Justice and what the cross-kissing ceremony meant and whether they (and especially Gaspard) were passionate Christians and if they were, didn't they think what they were doing was somewhat _blasphemous,_ to say the least?  
Wretched. Sebastian tired to simply glance through those interviews and speculations, and it wasn't even related to him. If he'd been a Christian he didn't think he'd have been as overt about it as Gaspard had been, simply because it was tiring to have to _justify_ himself to people, the purity of his beliefs aside.

But none of that seemed to be a problem for the other man. Gaspard was happy and he had God. Sebastian had been too busy for God, or else disbelieving, or else frightened - wholly, sadly, unwilling. And as he gazed at the man working away in front of him he had to wonder: what made Gaspard so confident in his intangible beliefs?

He could do with knowing. It could be good advice. It was altogether quite pointless to try to demand an objective proof of Vincent's and the Testarossa's existence; he thought of them as there, they seemed to have something to tell him, so if they weren't also _beliefs_ that he had to deal with eventually then what were they?

"Gaspard?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"Might I ask you a question?"

"Sure, go right ahead."

Sebastian bit his lip slightly. "It's... somewhat _out there_."

"It's not about illegal stuff or anything, right?" Gaspard asked as he turned to the next page, only glancing at his laptop for a second to see that Sebastian was still there. When the other shook his head, he propped the pamphlet up again and resumed typing. "then I'll have a go at it. Ask away."

"Why do you believe in God?"

Gaspard stopped taking notes. The younger man saw him look up, first towards the camera before he faced Sebastian's image on the screen; this had the effect of Gaspard staring directly into his eyes, which he found most disconcerting. "I... pardon?"

"I'd like to know why you believe in God," Sebastian repeated. He received only blank looks in return, and hastened to clarify. "I'm not asking that as a challenge, I'm not trying to debate whether God exists or not. Let's just assume that he does. But what compels you personally to think that's the case? Did you rationalize your way to it somehow? Was it just what you've always believed? Or-" he paused, his mouth suddenly feeling dry with mixed dread and anticipation. "- did... did something _happen_ in your life that made you believe?"

A long shot, surely. It _was_ an unfair question to spring on Gaspard. For all he knew, Gaspard's faith was a matter of inheritance - and if that was so, he likely wouldn't appreciate being asked about it in the terms Sebastian had presented, and most certainly not during a conversation about tour schedules. He didn't even know whether the answer he'd get out of Gaspard would be relevant to his own troubles, as Vincent's current presence was not comparable to that of a _god,_ as unbelievable and supernatural it might still have been. (Vincent had displayed little interest in convincing or compelling Sebastian to approach him, for one, despite apparently wanting to 'talk to him later'.) He was just hoping to find a way to accept what was happening to him; someone like Gaspard, who perpetually existed _within_ faith, might be able to point him in the right direction. That was all there was to it.

"Have you had a religious experience recently?"

Sebastian smiled weakly. Not quite, but he appreciated the question nevertheless. He'd never talked about religion with Gaspard before and had been afraid that the other would think him strange or irrational. But he _was_ one of the few people Sebastian knew who was willing to consider those things with genuine seriousness, and he thought he could use his advice now more than ever.

"Something is... _happening_ around me," he answered, choosing his words carefully. "that I can't explain through logic or prior experience. I don't even know if it's appropriate to frame it like that, as something of a religious nature. I don't know how to categorize it, except that it's nothing like what I've seen in the past thirty-odd years of my life," he paused there to let Gaspard catch up, only resuming when he saw the other man nod slowly. "it's nothing to do with _substances_ , either, and I'm fairly sure I'm not going mad-"

"Oh _non_ , Sebastian, I wasn't going to suggest-"

"- thank you, I am very glad to hear that. I realize that this _is_ kind of out of nowhere, that's all. If merely retelling it is bizarre, actually seeing those things happen makes me feel even stranger - like I can't trust anything right in front of my eyes. But if not those, then what _can_ I believe in? What could any of this mean?" Sebastian took a breath there and gazed at Gaspard's image on the screen. The man was leaning forwards intently, waiting for him to finish; _good_ , he thought, he _did_ have Gaspard's full attention. "I don't feel like I'm in danger, but I have a feeling that... what I'm experiencing... is happening for a _reason_. And that maybe I ought to learn to take life as it comes - that I ought to have _faith_ \- until things fall into place again. But I've never had faith to that extent before. I don't know what it's _like._ You see what I mean?"

"Yes," Gaspard replied. "yes, I see what you mean."

Then there was silence for a while. It was his turn to talk. Sebastian sat back, suddenly feeling quite small and nervous. It was funny, how he suddenly felt that he shouldn't have brought up a topic like this on _Skype_ out of all places - but then, where else could he have done it? He was anxious around phones, and he probably wouldn't have had the courage to mention this in person had Gaspard actually been with him. He could only hope that he hadn't offended the other. Just as he was beginning to fidget, Gaspard finally spoke up.

"When I was little I was in a traffic accident. I had what they call a near-death experience."

He paused there to see Sebastian's reaction, nervous that the other wouldn't take him seriously, or that he would hit back with skepticism. Sebastian said nothing, and that seemed to satisfy Gaspard, as he carried on: "I say that, but mine wasn't half as dramatic as what they say near-death experiences are like. Tunnels with bright lights ahead, my life flashing back like a film on quadruple speed, complete peace - none of that. I suppose it was closer to an out-of- _body_ experience, except I hesitate to call it even that," Gaspard tapped his fingers on the desk, and took a deep breath. "it'd rained the day before and it was a school zone. No one there was going faster than thirty kilometres per hour, if that, which was why the car just knocked me down and nothing else. Or that's what they later told me. I didn't see the car; I remember everything lurching sideways, but it was all in slow-motion. Nothing hurt. I thought I'd just tripped in the middle of the road, it certainly didn't feel as if I'd been _hit_ by anything. I barely caught myself by my hands when I neared the ground, but the tarmac was slippery, so I ended up falling flat on my face anyway. It was far more embarrassing than it was shocking, or painful for that matter. So of course I was eager to get up - I raised my head and looked over next to me, and then I saw my face."

Sebastian blinked, suddenly wondering if he'd heard that right, or if he was missing something. "... _Quoi?"_

"I saw my face," Gaspard repeated. "not as a reflection. My actual face, on my physical body, with me staring at myself from someone else's point of view. I briefly became two people at the same time."

He didn't respond to that simply because he didn't know know _how_. And yet Gaspard was serious, perhaps more serious than Sebastian had seen him be for _anything_ , and he already had an excellent track record for sombre judgement. Certainly more so than his partner, anyhow. Vaguely, he wondered how many people Gaspard must have told this tale to, and came to the conclusion that it couldn't have been many. "What... uh, did you feel about that?"

"I thought it was strange at the time, but when this was actually happening, I was too young to comprehend just _how_ strange it was. You know you can never really see your own face in action, right? Mirrors don't reflect you as you appear to other people, and photographs and videos can only get you so far. But there I was... I had my eyes closed and my mouth was slightly open, there were dirt specks down my collar and past my right ear, I remember that _ever_ so clearly-" he gestured towards his ear. "- that is, right-hand from my _body's_ perspective, while I lay there facing the sky. Obviously when I was looking _down_ at myself on the ground, I thought the dirt was on the left side, my _conscious_ left. I'm sorry. This sounds all muddled and confusing. I suppose it was. ("Not at all," Sebastian supplied, "you're doing just fine.") But I looked so _calm_ , that was the other thing. Far calmer than I was, though I was hardly panicking myself. Really, I was just puzzled, so much that I didn't have the presence of mind to look down at myself and see what form _I'd_ assumed, considering my body didn't look like more than a shell at that moment. I was more interested in touching my face on my body, because I didn't know if I could feel as well as I could see. Then..."

"... Then?"

There was no response for a few seconds as Gaspard stared down at the keyboard. "... Then nothing. I blinked. When I opened my eyes, I could see the sky from where I was lying on the road. I'd re-entered my body somehow and it was back to the first-person perspective for me from then on. But I hadn't felt unusually light, or as if I was hovering in the air, or anything; I'm certain that I didn't lift myself out of my body when the car hit me, and I didn't _melt_ back in, either. And _mon Dieu,_ did my back hurt! I'd felt just fine when I was out of it. Maybe it wasn't, like, _peaceful_ , but there hadn't been any pain. I actually cried when I sat up because I was so damned _sad_ that I'd been weighed down again."

He finally picked up the orange juice and swirled it around before he took a long sip, condensation dripping down the side of his fingers as he drank. Sebastian watched him put down the glass and shake his hand free of the water drops before he resumed. "All those _metaphors_... the things that religious texts say, all around the world, about how the body _binds you_ to the universe; after that incident, I couldn't think of that as just a figure of speech anymore. I still don't know what to make of my reflection, because I've seen what I _really_ look like in real life, not just on photos or on a screen. It feels inherently wrong to rely on anything else, because I never could get used to my mirror image. That's one thing my experience took from me forever, and while it might not sound like a big deal, _everyone_ uses mirrors. It's a strange thing to distrust and it isn't something I can avoid. If you hadn't asked I'd never have told you, for sure, I've barely told anyone that this happened to me. Who'd take me seriously? But... as I hope I'm getting across... all of this was _too_ realistic for me to have made up, especially when I was a child."

There was another pause. Gaspard was looking at him again as if he feared that he'd come across as ridiculous, though this time, Sebastian was a little too lost in the other's recollection to take immediate notice. It probably wasn't an unjustified sentiment from Gaspard's part, either; Sebastian _would_ have thought all of this irrelevant, or at least a mere trick of the mind, if he'd heard this story before Vincent had returned to him. Funny how things worked out. Eager to hear the rest, Sebastian looked back at the screen again and urged him on. "... Go on. Was _that_ what made you believe in God?"

"Oh, no. God came after. I wasn't even _thinking_ about God during all of this."

By now, Gaspard was warming to his tale; he paused to sip from the glass, but carried on without waiting for the other's input. "Some years after that, I was in a bad place. That was just before I changed course to music. You probably know where this is going - my degree was causing me an unparalleled amount of grief, and right about then was when the existential crisis I ought to have had as a teenager hit. I had _no idea what I was going to do with my life_ and I wasn't actually sure if I liked Graphic Design at all; Maman wanted me to work with her at the gallery, but I couldn't see myself doing that for decades like she had. But see... she'd booked me an internship anyway, I don't even think I could have called it that because it was something she just insisted that I go to. I can't resent her for it now, but back then I thought that was all I was going to amount to. At least Maman built up her own gallery _, her_ working there was something to be proud of, but what about me? Inherit it because I couldn't find anything else to do with my life?" he swallowed heavily, clearly bothered by the memories; Sebastian almost wondered if he ought to stop him, but before that, he was awed. He had never heard Gaspard speak so _much_ before, and regardless of whether this would help him regard Vincent or his other problems in a new light, he was _compelled_ to hear the rest of what he had to say. He'd hit upon something that was of great importance to Gaspard, and if he stopped him now, he might never open up to him like this again. "I couldn't handle feeling like such a failure. On top of that, my girlfriend at the time left me without a word, what a damned mess that was... it really was one of the worst periods of my life. You get the gist."

Sebastian blinked. Took a deep breath. He'd never had a _girlfriend_ , yes, but he did get it. "I know the feeling all too well."

"How did you get out of it when you felt that way?"

 _Oh, damn it all!_ "... I... I let my life take its course, I suppose."

Gaspard nodded in approval. "I figured as much. I suppose many people feel that way eventually, if not most. Some people ride it out; some people never recover, some find their solace in other things, or go ahead and fix _exactly_ what went wrong and nothing more - like for a girlfriend who left, you find yourself another, things like that. But for me, this is where God came in. Yes, at last," he chuckled, leaning forwards. "one evening in late November, I was at the Saint-Sulpice. I'd argued with Maman and run away, and I was trying to cool my head before going home and asking for forgiveness, or something - but I just couldn't. The longer I sat there the worse I felt, I was being sucked down into a black hole of misery, and before long I had my head in my hands. Crying. No one asked me what I was doing there, never before and since then have I felt so completely _alone_ in the dark; I almost want to say that it was a suicidal urge. Yes, actually, that was what it was. I was _suicidal_ , but without the drive. I wanted to know that the the choice _was_ there, to just walk away from my life, even if I never took it. I wanted to fade out quietly and not exist any more. It was awful."

(Sebastian knew what _that_ felt like, too, perhaps even more strongly. He just didn't say it because he didn't want to worry Gaspard.)

"At one point the choir began to file down the middle of the church," Gaspard continued, and drained his orange juice. The glass was pushed completely out of view, and then there were just the two men regarding each other through the screens. "I kept my head down, I hadn't a thought in my head about what that meant. One of them knocked down a Bible at the end of the row where I was sat, though, and I had the presence of mind to go and pick that up. I was annoyed that they didn't notice, although - come to think of it, I think that was meant to be," he looked down briefly. "the Bible had fallen open to a certain passage, I don't know if you've heard it. Matthew 17:20 - _'if you have faith no bigger than a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move from here to there; and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you._ ' That alone wouldn't have affected me much, but the moment I finished reading that, the whole church fell silent for a second. We're talking not a single sound, here. Later I remembered that the organist had been playing in the background from when I'd first entered the church, and I'd tuned the sound out - but I hadn't the time to recognize that when the choir began to _sing_. The evening service."

"..."

"I don't remember what they were singing. My mind tells me that it was the _Miserere,_ but I don't know why they would have sung that - I only knew that I hadn't expected it, and to this day I can barely describe it. It was a _force_. I'd known that music could be like a-" he gestured helplessly, searching for the words, still caught up in the power of his experience years after it had occurred. "- could _assert its own presence_ , instead of just being in the background like it so often is nowadays, but that was my first time feeling it. There were chills down my spine, for a second or two I was _terrified_ \- not seconds ago I was wishing that I could leave this world, and then there I _was_ , floating in the absolute centre of somewhere else. But then, I thought... _I've felt this before_ ," his breath hitched, and he looked at Sebastian. "I'm sure you know what I'm getting at."

Gaspard hadn't even needed to ask. "That memory - from your childhood!"

"Exactly. The feeling didn't last as long that time, but it jolted me right back to _that moment_ when I realized that the world wasn't only what it seemed. Before that I'd lived my life almost forgetting that it'd ever happened - school, work, growing up, all of those things had dulled me to that feeling. But sitting there, I couldn't believe that I'd ever forgotten. It was - it was _painful_ , Sebastian. It hurt me because I'd wasted so much time not knowing I was capable of more, because I hadn't realized what that meant when I was little, my self being split into two. I'd feared life and death because I'd forgotten to see myself as something _more_. I wasn't _just_ a pile of expectations and responsibilities and anguish encased in flesh; no one is, Sebastian, that's the important thing. That... that _transcendental lightness_ , call it the soul, the spirit, or inner energy - what you make of that, what you produce _with_ it, is what will remain of us. Whether it be art, music, love, anything you _put your soul into_. That's not just a metaphor, either. And sitting there, listening to the product of such energy, was what finally convinced me that I didn't need to be afraid of my choices to come and the things I wanted to do, as long as that was what I wanted. Oh, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard up until that point. I've never identified myself as a strict Catholic, I couldn't even say a hail Mary if I was being forced to at gunpoint, but right then and there was some kind of breaking point for me. Let me tell you, Sebastian, that night - _God was there_."

"I started praying as best as I could. Now that I think about it, it was the most hastily put together prayer I've ever recited in my life, I couldn't possibly do worse. But that didn't matter, because sitting there in prayer was what kept me there in the Saint-Sulpice - shaking, feeling, _seeing_ what was happening around me. It was then I knew what prayer was for. It's there for you to think about what _you_ want out of yourself, and for you to see what your world already has to offer you. God serves as a medium between your desires and your understanding. Hasty as it was, I couldn't believe just how _long_ that prayer went on, just how much I still had left to _say_ about the kinds of things I was feeling - and there it was, the proof that I wasn't gone and that I wasn't hopeless. That no matter what I chose to do, I would never be rejected from the world, not when I was still _this_ attuned to it. And - and to think that I'd thought of leaving all of _that_ behind!"

He couldn't continue for a while, too overwhelmed with the memories. Sebastian had never witnessed him like this before. He could only watch until Gaspard calmed himself, utterly spellbound by the force of the man's emotions as much as he was by the story. "... I left the Saint-Sulpice shaking, but I was oddly at peace, like I'd reclaimed something of my past. That quote from Matthew I looked up as soon as I got home, and it was the single belief that I took out of the Bible and proved correct. Not a week after that, I met Xavier. We could talk. All my fears died down - he turned out to be interested in music as well, and suddenly I had someone who could support me in what I wanted to do - and now, here we are. Together. Actually, the sort of faith I've been talking about here is a big part of why we're so close."

"You talk about this with him?"

"All the time. Maybe we don't talk of ' _faith_ ' in those exact terms, but we do question what we see and believe on a regular basis. Justice sessions wouldn't be the same without us discussing what we _mean_ by 'justice' ever so often. It's also why we don't want to let go of the cross imagery. We don't make _religious_ music, but we're not going to abandon _that_ image for anything. Not when it represents what brought us together. If you asked him about what we do, he'll never give you a straight answer - we don't like to explain too much-"

"Ah. I'm sorry if I've been too prying-"

Gaspard shook his head empathically. " _Bah non!_ On the contrary, I feel like this _is_ the kind of situation where we ought to explain. No one asked me this before, Sebastian, like you did. No one save for Xavier, anyway, it's not really the kind of thing _interviewers_ and _journalists_ like to talk about. But don't get me wrong... our faith isn't so deep and special that we literally can't make the time to explain it to other people, or anything. My experience might not have been typical, but when it comes to _questioning things_ , I don't think I'm too far off the mark from the average person of faith. Neither me nor Xavier," Gaspard folded his hands and gazed down at them. "we were both baptized when we were little, and we both think it's nice to go to Mass when Christmas rolls around. But the baptism was just a nice present as far as we're concerned, and we go to Mass because all that community spirit cheers us up. That's probably the same for a lot of people, you know?"

"I suppose so."

Gaspard nodded. "Xavier's read the Bible all the way through, two versions of it, but I haven't. Not that it really matters. Books didn't convince us of God's existence. Something happened to us one day, and we began to think that there was more to this world - then over time, we gave that _more_ a name, and it gave us relief. I think that was enough for both of us," he looked straight into Sebastian's eyes. "to sum it up... well, I think I have a very direct faith. Having it feels like having a compass in my pocket at all times, that's it. In no way does it provide a broader metaphysical understanding. I don't know why bad things happen to good people or whether we have free will or what happens to us after death - but, by God, I feel that whatever happens in life, I will never be given a burden that's too much for me to carry."

Whatever he'd thought about faith before, Sebastian had to admit - he probably could have done with a definition like that a long time ago, when he'd made up his initial impressions about religion and faith and what those things entailed. This was just Gaspard's own version of it, and he didn't know if he could identify with it - Sebastian lacked in the essential belief that there was a God, because if there was one, they seemed too uncaring or inept for his own liking. But what wouldn't he have given to _feel,_ at any point in his life, that he had strength beyond his own will to manage whatever life threw at him?

Who would turn that down?

"Thank you for trusting me with all of this," he said, feeling genuinely as if some minor part of his mind had cleared. "that really helps with what I've been thinking about recently, no one's talked to me about faith like this before."

"You're welcome. It helps Xavier too. His God is nothing like mine."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," Gaspard glanced behind him to double-check that he was alone. "... _something_ happened to him, too. Not an experience like mine, but something profound _like_ that. He doesn't talk about it much, even to me, so I'll never know just _how_ he came to this conclusion, but: Xavier's God is a _verb_. Once he'd understood that, he told me, he couldn't stop seeing _its_ movement through everything."

Sebastian had to think hard about that one. "... So... _principles_? ' _What goes around comes around',_ divine truths, things like that?"

"That's a good example right there. That comforts me - it keeps me reminded that you never lose the things you love if you can remember that it'll always come back, just like how there's always spring after winter. But Xavier? He'd hear that and he'd see a vengeful God. You might argue it's all word games and wilful interpretations, but it strongly affects how we live our lives - I think that's the charm and terror of God, or at least how he comes across in text, and that's also why you can't take any writing for granted. You can get the entirely opposite attitude from the same set of words."

"The terror of God," Sebastian repeated. "... that's not a new or unusual concept in itself, but it is very difficult to think of Xavier as afraid of anything, I confess. Unless it's not fear?"

Gaspard shook his head. "No, I think he definitely fears it. I talk of mirrors and compasses but _those_ , you can put away. That wouldn't make sense with how Xavier sees God, it'd be like trying to escape thermodynamics or some essential principle like that. Xavier would have every reason to be in awe, if not be afraid of it outright."

Pause.

"Though you can't tell him I told you that."

Sebastian shook his head, slowly, to indicate that he wouldn't. He was still puzzling over the fact that Gaspard spoke of those two Gods (was the correct way to describe it?) without contradiction. "But both are the Christian God," he said, almost to himself than to Gaspard.

"Yes. I suppose I should have said that that's how we each experienced the singular God," Gaspard rubbed his chin slightly. "Xavier's been more unusual, but for me - God's exactly as comforting as the illustrations in Bibles make him look like, with flowing robes and a brilliant white beard and all. Not creative, but I acknowledged God in my time of need, and that image was what stuck," he sat back, smiling brightly, and from that alone Sebastian could see that everything Gaspard had said up to this point was the truth. He too was a man of few expressions, though not quite as drastically as Sebastian, and well known for this tendency amidst others in Ed Banger - barely anything made him smile like that, except for Xavier and excellent art and their music. (And now, as Sebastian knew, God.) "that's the way it was meant to be, between myself and God. He gave me strength when I needed it and he sent me Xavier. There's a lifelong reassurance in that."

Then neither of them said anything for a while.

Sebastian didn't know what to reflect foremost on, the first of Gaspard's unusual experiences or the second. The first was truer to his own dilemma, as it seemed distinctively not of this world. But maybe they _weren't_ meant to be reflected upon separately at all - whatever Sebastian was _meant_ to realize for himself from Vincent's re-appearance, in the way Gaspard had reached a revelation from his childhood experience that evening in the Saint-Sulpice, he wasn't even remotely close to it. It had helped him greatly to realize what faith could be, but at the same time he was more aware of its limitations than ever. Gaspard's was a consequence of his own realizations; Sebastian still had a lot to learn, and possibly to _suffer_ , if he was going to deal with this matter in terms of faith. He couldn't say that this was an answer that he liked. As he was thinking about all of this, a small Skype notification popped up. Sebastian looked. "The notes," Gaspard clarified at the other end, and he nodded and received the file without further ado. "and a copy of the timetable. I've also put in contact details for the festival organizers, just in case."  
  
_Thank you_ , Sebastian tried to say, but what came out of his mouth was something different. "... No bigger than a mustard seed."

Gaspard inclined his head. "No more, no less."

He was back to his laconic mood. Sebastian sensed that he had imparted all the wisdom that he had to give, at least for now; it was time to wrap it up. "Thank you, Gaspard. Thank you very much. You've given me a lot to think about."

"No problem at all. You _will_ talk to me if you need more advice, right?"

Sebastian paused, then smiled - it was only a small one, but heartfelt. He'd always known that Gaspard kept him constantly in mind - precisely in the way Xavier _didn't_ , he'd think wryly afterwards, but still - and that today, he must have felt validated in his concern after seeing Sebastian come to him for guidance. "I will. I'll let you go now."

"You take care of yourself. Do tell me what you decide, too, about Detour."

Sebastian replied in the affirmative and ended the conversation first as he was wont to do. Then he sat back on the sofa - _dear God,_ he thought, _that took over an hour,_ and felt dismayed because he really hadn't intended to take up so much of Gaspard's time. So much to think about, and yet so little actually done! Oh, he'd eventually sort things out, but once he was left alone with his own moods and problems he felt that the motivation Gaspard had helped him with was dissolving away fast within his heart. _I can't do this,_ his mind despaired; a second later, remembering Gaspard's advice, it corrected the statement to _I can't do this alone_ , though for Sebastian that somehow made his predicament worse. He pushed the laptop away and pressed his hand to his forehead.

*****

Sebastian first realized that he and Vincent had become friends one early-May afternoon, when two boys walking past the lockers made a snide comment about him, and Vincent subsequently reacted by punching them in the face.

Putting it like that was definitely an oversimplification of what had happened. For one, he hadn't actually been _with_ Vincent, he hadn't even realized that he was nearby until the boys crashed to the ground - but there was no doubt that Vincent had thought it _correct_ to defend him, entirely without question as long as Sebastian was safe. He could never forget the fact that Vincent had believed his dignity to be of the utmost importance, and so he couldn't help remembering the whole incident through rose-coloured glasses, even though it hadn't warranted them; it helped that once he had left high school, Sebastian took a very long time to meet people on par with Vincent's sense of justice who were also willing to care for him. Oversimplification or not, that was what he _preferred_ to remember, and he did so with a sharp clarity that sometimes astounded even him.

It had been around three o'clock in the afternoon. He'd finished his classes for the day, and he'd walked to his locker to rearrange his bag and put his books away for safekeeping. A couple of his textbooks were uniquely (and _unwarrantedly_ ) heavy, and if he had the bad luck to need both of them on the same day, his shoulders ached something awful with their weight by the time school let out. This was one of those times, and he winced as he rubbed at his right shoulder, massaging where it was sore. He'd need to put something warm on it when he got home.

At the same time, two boys - one very tall and one with curly red hair - came around the corner, talking loudly to themselves. (Sebastian only heard their names being mentioned once, and both times too late to truly associate them with said names.) When he heard them approaching, with his left hand still squeezing at his shoulder, Sebastian threw a wayward glance in the boys' general direction to see who they were; he did not recognize them, and thus looked away, dropping his hand and rooting around listlessly in his backpack instead. That was all the involvement that had been warranted between all them as far as he was concerned. But for whatever reason the boys found this _amusing_ , or else an excuse for _malice_ , as evidenced by their immediate snicker and pointed glances towards him. And as they walked past, he distinctly heard the words: "- that weird kid over there? Talks like a German and looks like a Serb, I can only guess what he'd _act_ like..."

His breath caught in his throat.  
Not necessarily because the insult stung, but because he didn't know _where_ the accusations were coming from. He'd never even seen those boys before; either they'd seen him before without him being aware of it, or they'd been made aware of his existence by someone _else_ who thought poorly of him. But Sebastian could not fathom _who_ that could be, nor what would he have done so _wrong_ to give other people such an impression, and that made him suddenly paranoid. Fortunately for him, that was about as far as he got on _that_ particular chain of thought, because he was then immediately distracted by the sight of _someone_ darting out from behind him to land two square punches on the boys' faces.

"...!"

The boys had not seen this coming any more than he had. One went down immediately without even a cry of pain, so stunned he was from the force of the punch; one cried out and covered his face, doubling over but still standing. " _Apologize!_ " Sebastian's defender commanded - the boy turned so quickly in response that his locker door clanged shut. Vincent stood there, fist still clenched and raised. He wasn't looking at Sebastian, but was standing protectively slightly in front of him. The initial, violent rush of fury had already dissipated from his face, but his eyes still burned with it. Sebastian hadn't imagined he'd ever see the other boy start a fight for his sake, and frankly he found it more alarming before anything else.

"Vincent!" he tried - his voice came out too small, and was not better the second time he tried. "Vincent, what are you-"

He trailed off as one of the other boys, the one who'd managed to keep standing, groaned and raised his head. He was still clutching at his face, his nose streaming blood over his fingers. "Belorgey!" he choked out.

"Yes. Hi."

The boy swore and hastily wiped away the blood with a sleeve, rushing off in the opposite direction. Evidently he'd decided that a confrontation with Vincent wasn't worth the trouble. This was a wise decision, as it turned out; the second boy was just sitting up himself, and _he_ was less accepting of defeat. "Fancy seeing _you_ here," Vincent said, a faintly disgusted and pointed tone punctuating the 'you' in a way Sebastian had never heard him do before. "still in the full job of wasting everyone's time, huh? Managed a four-minute mile yet, or are you still busy letting your mouth run off instead?"

The boy spat on the ground. "Shut up. Belorgey. Bastard poser. You're not even one of _us_ anymore."

"Thanks for the observation. Now are you going to apologize?"

"For what, you can fuck right off. We're going to get you back for this, we know where you live, Morgan had my girlfriend wa-"

"Who _hasn't_ had your girlfriend?" Vincent sneered. "I guess that's a no for the apology. Bastien? Are you all right with that? _I'm_ not all right with that, but I'm still happy to leave the loser behind if you'd prefer to go."

That seemed like the wiser course of action to Sebastian as well. He didn't care so much about being insulted, but he definitely didn't want Vincent or himself in trouble. Unfortunately, the red-haired boy seemed to have every intention of making things harder for himself, and by extension, for Vincent as well. "Drop dead."

"You what, sweetheart?"

"Drop dead!"

Vincent had been baiting him for that. He laughed out loud, waited long enough for the other to get back on his feet, and then kicked him swiftly on one knee. It was such a small, almost nonchalant move - certainly not the footballer's kick that it _could_ have been - but it was no less effective, for the boy went right back down like a sack of bricks. It was almost surreal, how he simply crumpled to the floor and curled forwards to clutch at his knee, all without a single sound nor even an expression save for a wild directionless stare. The raw immediacy of pain did not allow for such luxuries.

But little by little, his senses caught up. It was the _sound_ that came first, a choked noise that tried to resemble a swear but couldn't make the cut. Not the first time, anyway. He mouthed it again a few times before he regained full control of his voice: " _Fuck_!" he finally cried out, squeezing his eyes shut tightly in vain. It was too late for that, though, everyone had already seen how frightened he was. That had been what Vincent had intended all along, _humiliation_ , through something that looked so minor but in reality brought unsharable - and Sebastian assumed, surprisingly _intense_ \- pain.

Vincent let out a low whistle. Sebastian glanced between him and the boy on the floor nervously, feeling as if he ought to say something.  
He'd gotten into this for Sebastian's sake, so it seemed only right that _he_ called it off. Sebastian was uneasy about the possibility that Vincent might not stop otherwise, and he just didn't think that he had been insulted so badly in the first place that the punishment was appropriate.

Bu then, this wasn't just about Sebastian, was it? Nor was it really about whatever personal resentment was there between Vincent and the other boy, that much was obvious. Sebastian found himself unable to say anything once he'd properly caught the look in Vincent's eyes - that strange domineering pleasure in them made it clear that he _couldn't_ interfere. Vincent didn't have a thought for anyone but himself and his own delight in that moment. Looking at the gleam in his eyes, how he quickly licked over his upper lip, Sebastian thought he understood then what made men daredevils. Everyone was out for justice in their own personal way, some of them more sensible than others, but the thrill of apparently- _righteous_ action was not easily denied by such things as common-sense morals. Even less so if there was something tangible about it, a _prize_ almost, to demonstrate one's victory over some other thing or force or person. Everyone wanted to see injustice punished, and some wanted it badly enough that they were willing to enact it at great personal risk to themselves.

"All right," Vincent was saying in the meanwhile, crouching down next to his victim. His tone was completely conversational, perhaps even gentle. "this is how _you've_ come out of it, baby. You should still be able to walk, so get used to it or whatever. I just took care of the one today, but if you mess with me or him again, I'll have to bust _both_ kneecaps. Are we clear?"

The red-haired boy hissed with pain as he forced himself to sit up again. "Holy shit - _fuck_ \- you're, you're one arrogant son of a bitch, Belorgey, you're really going to get hurt one day-"

"Sure, by you and... the other what's-his-name, that bastard who ran off at the sight of me. And what'll _you_ get out of that, eh? My haunted Testarossa? Shall I leave it to you on my will and seal it with a fat fucking kiss?"

" _Watch us!_ You just wait, I swear we'll put you in the fucking _hospital_ when we're done."

Vincent faked a yawn and wrapped one arm around Sebastian's shoulders. "I'm waiting. And so's the poor sod who's coaching you for track. Go get some of _that_ first and we'll talk."  
That finally made him hobble off into the distance, body and pride both bruised, but neither of the boys could spare too much sympathy for him. Sebastian _was_ mildly concerned, but not because he was worried about him or the potential vengeance he might unleash upon either himself or Vincent; the boy was useless, he could tell from the start, he'd merely wished that Vincent hadn't needed to physically demonstrate it. "You didn't need to do that for me," he said quietly when they were alone again.

"I know," Vincent answered, simple and honest. "but I wanted to. Robert and I have bad blood between us, anyhow, and I know you wanted to go. I would have left him alone then, but I somehow never imagined that he'd have turned into _more_ of an idiot than he already used to be. None of that's on you," he gestured to Sebastian, requesting that he follow. Together they took the opposite way out of the building and sat by the steps leading out from the exit. "no one's going to call you anything but your _name_ on my watch. Though I'll leave plenty of room for the compliments. I don't like it when people insult my friends."

 _Friend_ , that word sung in his heart; he felt a little warmer than before, though he was still more concerned than touched. "Thanks. But really, I wasn't all that offended. It might have been dumb but it wasn't anything worth being angry about. He wasn't - completely _wrong_ , or anything."

"... Huh?"

"Well, I _am_ a Serb," Sebastian shrugged. It was the first time he'd felt neutral about admitting it. Vincent looked surprised, but only for a second or two. "half, anyway. And I know what's happening in my country because we fled from it. We couldn't stay there or in France when the war came, we'd have been here four years this summer... I guess I sort of understand where he was coming from, if he only ever heard of Serbia from the war."

This didn't seem to reassure Vincent at all. "But that makes it even worse. A _war_ isn't something to mock a person for."

"Yes, well... but the people of my country are hurting others, they say, and I don't get to decide how hurt those people actually must have been. That's how the world is. It's not something I can run from, or pretend to be fine with, just because I want to remember kinder times."

"And that's not for you to bear alone, either," the other boy countered. Sebastian had no idea how to react to that, except that he was surprised and more than a little bit grateful to hear it. Thankfully, Vincent pressed no further than that, so he was saved from having to answer. He seemed curious but hesitant, doubtless bursting with questions about Sebastian's past but also not wanting to offend him; there was nothing to do but to wait, though Sebastian did find himself wishing that whatever Vincent asked him would be _kind_.

"... So are you..." Vincent finally spoke up, and made a vague gesture. Sebastian understood that he was trying to be sensitive, and nodded at him to continue. "... God, I hope it's all right to ask you this, but how _did_ you end up in the States? I thought you’d only lived in France before you came over. Do you have relatives here?"

"Nobody else, no. And it’s true, what I said. My family's back in Belgrade, but when I was born, my parents lived in Paris, so we kept moving between the two – Serbia was where we went back to during holidays. And we did almost stay in France for good when the war started, only because we were used to the place. But _majka_ -" he caught himself just in time and struggled for words briefly, settling on what next felt natural, and what was probably appropriate between him and Vincent. "- _Maman_ thought it wasn't far enough. My father's dead and my family's always been... um, _political_ , she wanted to get us away from all of that. She thought nowhere in Europe was safe enough."

"A fresh start, then," then there was an awkward pause. "... is _that_ why your dad...?"

Sebastian shook his head again. "He died when I was one, nothing to do with the conflict. I never knew his face."

" _Oh._ I'm so sorry."

"It's all right. Like I said, I don’t remember him, I was only little. My problems only started with the war."

The older boy looked down at his hands, nervously thumbing over the knuckles of his left hand. "... But... are things all right for you now? As much as they can be?"

"I can hardly complain, we escaped the war zone-" but Vincent was shaking his head. That wasn't the answer he was looking for. "... hmm?"

"No," Vincent said quietly. "here. Is living _here_ all right for you?"

_Why wouldn't it be? I'm alive, right?_

At least, that was the answer Sebastian seriously considered giving, until the sensible part of him told him that he shouldn't do that. It would be a rude and careless dismissal of the other's concern. But the alternative - how could he describe it? Could he be justified in telling Vincent about how much he missed Belgrade, almost as if he was dying for the city, when he didn't let his sadness affect his daily life? Hell, when he wasn't even _consciously_ sad most of the time? Did he want to tell Vincent about his adventures in English (as he referred to them, with ironic generosity), and how in French or Serbian he couldn't be the boy that Vincent knew, because the Sebastian who had grown up speaking _those_ languages was locked away tight in a different time? Was it worth it to confess to him that he was afraid of one day seeing some immense tragedy in Yugoslavia plastered across the headlines, and having to say to the other _no, Vincent, I'm not dangerous?_

No. No, it wouldn't be worth it. Sebastian finally settled for a smile, a small one.

"It's all right on the days it can be."

There weren't words to express how unbelievably hurt Vincent looked at that.  
Sebastian didn't know _how_ he'd done it, or what experiences he must have had that let him _know_ , but the other boy had read between the lines almost the instant that he'd heard those words. He'd tried to be delicate about being saddened and afraid without _saying_ that he was saddened and afraid, but Vincent knew now anyway. He only let Sebastian see for a moment before he caught himself and turned away, but it was too late for him to conceal the emotions that flitted over his face: anger, towards this country for not protecting Sebastian better when he was at his most vulnerable; shame, towards himself for making his friend uncomfortable and also being a representative of said country; sad, too, in a way, signalling either that he _personally_ was not unfamiliar to the kind of troubles Sebastian suffered, or that he too was keeping up with the news in Eastern Europe and had only just connected it to Sebastian's circumstances. (Or both. It would turn out to be both.) And all of those emotions were topped off with so much _uncertainty,_ too; he could see that Vincent didn't know how to respond, suddenly unsure as to whether he was being blamed, and that he was sorry that he had ever asked.

And that made Sebastian regret what he'd said. Of course it wasn't Vincent's fault. Perhaps he ought to have been upfront about his situation after all, up to and including explanations of what exactly he was afraid of and what he was so sad about instead of making his friend _assume_. "It's all right, you know," Sebastian spoke quietly, and a little unsteadily, in an attempt to console. "we left Belgrade because it was legitimately dangerous for us, almost nothing I experience here could be worse than that. And _France_ wasn't the kindest to us, either, now that I'm older and have had the time to think about things a little more - I don't think we'd have been better off there. At best, it'd have been about the same as here. It was better we began again in this place, where no one had to know much about us, instead of seeing people we liked before... _avoid_ us, or something," he paused. "that happened even before the war. The people I went to school with, sometimes their parents got _really_ offended that Maman was the only person in our house. Because they thought she was unwed, and because she had an accent, too. I mean, people complaining about that sort of thing isn't new, not _just_ about us, not _just_ in France or Serbia or the States. Anyway, the parents, they never did say anything to _us_ directly - but I heard it said to this boy in my class once, that he should count himself lucky that he had a good home and a good life, unlike the bastard son that I clearly wa-"

Vincent stopped him right there, by grabbing him and holding him tight to his chest. Sebastian's breath halted in his ribcage and left in the form of a faint shocked sigh.

He'd hugged no one like this since he'd come to the States, save for his mother. The warmth that flooded him was so sudden, and for a single _jamais-vu_ second, so _foreign_ that he didn't know how to react. His hands remained tense on his lap, where he'd left them before he'd been interrupted; it was Vincent who approached them first, too, splitting his embrace so that one arm stayed comfortingly around Sebastian's shoulder while his other hand came to rest against the younger boy's own. (That was right - _against,_ not upon, never pretending to do more than comfort, communicating a great deal more through that refusal than if he had offered grandiose gestures or words.) When Sebastian looked down at their hands nestled together he saw that there was a scar on the surface of Vincent's left thumb, running along the breadth of the knuckle, old and pale and only slightly raised.

 _That_ , he dared to touch, and only with a great deal of hesitation. The other boy didn't react to his tracing it at all, so whatever story there might have been behind it, Sebastian would never know. It was, however, an introduction to the _rest_ of Vincent's large, warm hands, and though he didn't move to touch over more of them, Sebastian could see how roughened they were. That dark patch along the side of his left hand, that was a _burn_ , he was sure; his fingertips were calloused much like a guitarist's; Vincent's nails were well-kept, but with an oddly scrubbed look, as if he was forced to pay unusual attention to them just to make his hands look presentable. He thought of the work that Vincent did after school; he'd been told only of the deliveries, but the closer he looked, the more evident it was that that wasn't _all_ he did. It was quite likely that whatever it was, it was hard work, and that Vincent was doing anything he could do to keep himself afloat.

The important question was _why_ that was necessary.

It struck Sebastian then how little he knew about Vincent's personal life. At the start, he'd thought that it'd have been rude to ask, but they weren't at _the start_ any more and perhaps he needed to get a move on.  
_My dad's French_ , Vincent had said. _He didn't actually like living there_ , he'd said. Sebastian wondered whether Vincent's father had been in the same situation as he was - for it wasn't unusual at all, the idea that someone could be treated unfairly in their birth country to such an extent that they had to leave as soon as they could. It was only a theory, but it would be an explanation for why Vincent seemed familiar with the kind of troubles Sebastian faced.

Not that he'd have minded the other explanation, that Vincent was simply full of compassion for his fellow human beings. It wasn't as if he wished his friends the same as what he was going through, far from it. There were things best not known, because when people became stressed and discriminated against they often became desperate and ungentle, and it had charmed Sebastian that Vincent was the exact opposite of that. He couldn't speak for Vincent, but Sebastian himself was eternally a little sad and eternally a little grateful and that was as good as it was ever going to get.  
They stayed like that for a while. The breeze had turned low and cold by the time Vincent raised himself to his feet, dusted his knees and thighs, and nodded to Sebastian. "Getting late. I should take you back home. Come on."

Sebastian didn't protest that. They didn't talk during the short walk to the Testarossa and the drive back was very quiet, both boys mulling over and recovering from the heavy conversation they'd had. Once or twice Vincent looked as if he wanted to comment on something, but he never did so, and they did not speak again for the remainder of the drive. Sebastian stayed looking straight ahead for most of it, only looking away once to gaze along the length of the driveway that he'd first asked Vincent to drop him off at. Shortly after gaining his nickname, Sebastian had let the older boy know where he _actually_ lived - they didn't need to stop at the driveway anymore, so the Testarossa carried on past it with little fanfare. But it was only now that he realized that he'd never have trusted that information with someone whom he _didn't_ consider close. He'd trusted Vincent for much longer than he himself had thought, certainly from before the older boy had confirmed that _yes_ , they were friends. That fact startled him.

There were still barriers, of course. Making attempts to be _acquainted_ with people was a basic courtesy from Sebastian's perspective, but he attributed to _friendships_ a difficulty that American standards would have found excessive. He did not find it easy to make friends because easily-made friends seemed a contradiction; whether Vincent shared this definition, he doubted that. As full of affection as he was, it was hard to believe that Vincent could be that intimately and deeply linked to so many people. It just didn't seem possible. _His_ friendship was probably of the relaxed, less serious kind, not that that was anything to fault him for.

Still, it was nice, knowing that it was fine for him to regard Vincent with the gravitas that the other warranted. It was clearly important to Vincent that he was all right, so maybe they would see eye to eye on Sebastian's definition of friendship one day. (And he was entirely correct to make that judgement, though that day came sooner than he thought.) When they reached Sebastian's house, there was no car to be seen. His mother was still working. Vincent briefly parked the car in the empty space, turned to the other boy as if to bid him goodbye, then said: " _Murder in the Cathedral_."

"... What?"

"It's a play. Read it. It's in the library. You won't regret it, I promise."

Then he let Sebastian out, waved a goodbye and drove off before the boy could think of a reply. He went inside and noted down the name of the play on a spare piece of paper, setting it atop his satchel so that he'd be reminded in the morning. But Vincent had given him something to chew upon for a while; by the time he went to bed, his jaws were rather tired.

\-----

Later that day came even more progress, though he liked this bout of it less than his conversation with Gaspard.  
He actually managed to _talk_ to Vincent. It might not have been much, but it was a start.

Around eight o'clock in the evening Sebastian finished his work - glanced at the schedule and notes that Gaspard had sent him, before decisively pushing them away - and went to the kitchen for a drop or several of liquor. He found that there were none. There wasn't even a standard bottle of wine to fall back on. This didn't surprise him very much, because he hadn't been drinking recently, and even if he _had_ been his neglect of essential supplies would have caught up with him nonetheless. Sebastian wondered for a moment if he could make do with coffee and cigarettes, but abandoned this thought after he remembered that he was also running fast out of the latter; that was an urgent need that he couldn't wait for, so he decided to bite the bullet and go to the shops.

There was only one problem with that idea, namely that of Vincent's existence. He'd walked past him without talking to him the last time he'd gone to the shops, but that hadn't been comfortable for himself (and now, he thought, likely not for Vincent either) and he wasn't eager to repeat the experience. He briefly wondered if Vincent might have been gone, himself, as he sometimes was - but a peek at the window proved that this wasn't the case. So he could wait for however long for Vincent to depart and sneak out then, or -

_It's your house, Sebastian Akchoté! You can come and go as you damn well want!_

\- or just face up to whatever was waiting for him.  
The powers of addiction were truly powerful. A brief examination in the kitchen cabinets revealed that no, he _truly_ did not have any more Marlboro at hand, and within a few minutes of confirming this he was dressed, putting on his shoes, and fetching his car keys from the small chrome dish by the door. "Fuck it," he muttered, without much more of a thought in his mind, and unlocked the door; no effort was made to quieten the sound, for in his bravado Vincent seemed quite manageable. Surely nothing was going to happen when the neighbours were around. There would be help, even if he wasn't acquainted with many of them.

He left the house. The Testarossa was there, and Vincent was in the driver's seat, having seen him emerge. Sebastian did not acknowledge them beyond a glance as he locked the door - but when the thing that he'd dreaded happened, which was Vincent leaving his car to walk up to him, he did not shrink away or attempt to move around the other. No. He just _looked_ at Vincent, pretty much, maintaining a neutral stance and only slightly nervous as to what was going to come.  
  
**OFF SOMEPLACE?**

Sebastian fidgeted with his car keys. "Yes," he said. It occurred that this was the first normal piece of conversation that he'd had with Vincent since his return. Shutting the door in his face for asking for a lighter or fervently denying his existence weren't valid conversation topics, surely. "I've... run out of drinks...so I'm going to get some."

** LET ME TAKE YOU THERE. **

"..."

Ah, yes. He'd vaguely suspected that _something_ like this would happen at some point. Right now wasn't the time he'd have pinpointed, the two of them being so awkward after years of having unlearnt each other, but the offer itself wasn't surprising. Sebastian weighed up the possibilities - talking with Vincent was inevitable to some degree, but he didn't know how much _of it_ they'd be able to get done when the store he had in mind wasn't even that far away. _And believe me, Vincent_ , he thought to himself, glancing down at their feet (Vincent's in familiar white sneakers, his in dark shoes), _you have a lot of explaining to do_.

Vincent took his silence as hesitation. **I DO JUST MEAN THAT I WILL TAKE YOU THERE AND BACK,** he said, sounding just a little plaintive. **I SHAN'T FOLLOW YOU. WE DON'T EVEN HAVE TO TALK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO. I JUST THOUGHT IT WOULD HELP.**

 _No bigger than a mustard seed_ , Gaspard had said. Sebastian took a deep breath.

_Why not? What do I have to lose at this point?_

"All right," he said. Vincent looked genuinely surprised to hear his assent. It was the first such expression that Sebastian had seen in him since his return, and how he looked - complete with the way his left eyebrow quirked in a painfully familiar curve - was so utterly _separate_ from the calm indifference that he'd displayed for the few days he'd been around. But Vincent was just as quick to collect himself as he had been in life (curse him for noticing those things!) and nodded, walking back towards the Testarossa and letting Sebastian follow as he pulled open the door on the passenger side.  
  
**YOU'RE SURE ABOUT THIS.**

" _Yes._ I did say."

Another nod. **JE T'EN PRIE, MA BELLE.**

Sebastian just looked at him. Vincent looked right back. **YES?**

"I'll thank you kindly to not refer to me as your _anyone_ , let alone a ' _belle_ '," Sebastian said dryly. "not appropriate for me. Never was, even if you once called me that."

** NEVER, HUH? **

Vincent would have known perfectly well that ' _belle_ ' was not the correct adjective. He could only be questioning Sebastian's denial of the past. "Unless you meant the car," he said, ignoring this as best as possible. "the... paradigms... of irony... have shifted quite a bit since you were gone."

** OH. **

That seemed to silence him proper, so Sebastian took a step forwards and entered the car without engaging him further. He had no interest in continuing this discourse, but he really wanted to know what the inside of the car was like - he'd been curious ever since he'd peered in a few days ago. He was morbidly curious about the scent, more than anything. He didn't know what he expected. Decay, perhaps. Or if he was lucky, it would smell like it had done before - freshener, clean leather, a faint waft of dust from the A/C.  
But none of those things were present when he finally shut the Testarossa's door and drew in a quick breath; in fact, he couldn't smell much of _anything_ at all, and just before he shut the door, the evening breeze beside him had filled the car with the exact same cool scent as there was outside. The seats were as soft and smooth as before, the recline well-fitting to his body, the interior as well-organized as he remembered and had seen a few days earlier - but that was it. The car was a good place to sit in for a few minutes, but other than that, both Vincent and the Testarossa might as well have been blank space.

He didn't know whether he was disturbed or disappointed by that. He suspected the latter. It upset him greatly.

 _Ah, well_ , he thought, and sighed as he reached for the seatbelt. He was in now, whether he liked the experience to come or not. At least the Testarossa made for neither unpleasant nor hostile space - or he thought that, for a full half-minute as he mindlessly fiddled with the seatbelt to buckle himself in. About a dozen attempts failed before he finally looked down and began paying attention to the task at hand, surprised at how difficult this simple act suddenly had become - the belt was long enough, but the buckle simply refused to _stay_ in place, popping straight out almost the moment he took his hand off it. "Why's this... wait, what the..."

Vincent had sat down on the driver's seat by this point. Sebastian quickly looked around to see what he was doing, and was even more dismayed to see that he simply pulled out the seatbelt and buckled himself in like normal. He looked around - met Sebastian's helpless gaze - and glanced down to see what the problem was.

 ** _OH._** He reached over. Sebastian flinched a little. **SORRY. LET ME, PLEASE.**

"I don't remember it ever being like this before!"

 ** AND YOU REMEMBERED RIGHT. NOWADAYS I NEED TO BE THE ONE.  **  
** SHE DOESN'T LIKE IT WITH ANYONE ELSE, SHE WON'T LET THEM. **

" _Who_ won't?"

** BABY GIRL.  **

The buckle clicked smartly into place the moment he said that, as if it had never resisted at all. Vincent nodded at it calmly and leaned back on his seat, reaching for the key to start up the car.

** I THINK SHE WAS THE ONE WHO BROUGHT ME BACK.  **

"Don't be ridiculous," left Sebastian's mouth before he could check himself. Vincent paused and gave him a long look as if he wanted to tell him to get a grip, and for once, he had nothing to say to that. Ridiculous, indeed - _ridiculous_ , that a car destroyed in a crash had returned intact over a decade later, but apparently not so that he was riding in it with its zombie owner, whom he'd talked to a couple of times already.

 **SHE WAS DESTROYED WHEN I WAS. BUT WHEN I AWOKE SHE WAS WAITING FOR ME, AS IF I'D JUST LEFT FOR A CIGARETTE AROUND THE CORNER.** The car purred into life as if on cue, perhaps even more in tune with its owner than when he had been alive. Vincent took the steering wheel and carefully backed out of the driveway, looking over his shoulder and briefly resting a hand behind Sebastian's headrest as he used to do. (Sebastian no longer found this to be very charming, though he hid his flinch this time.) **I DON'T REALLY GET IT EITHER, BUT THAT'S THE ONLY EXPLANATION I HAVE.**

Sebastian sighed, frustration already building inside him. It wasn't even that he was angry at Vincent or the car, only that he felt out of his depth and it was uncomfortable. "Some feisty kind of car this must be nowadays, then."

** YES. I AGREE WITH YOU. **

He didn't seem as if he'd taken him all that seriously. Sebastian wanted to be unkind. "If there ever was a time it wasn't feisty, I mean. The kind not coloured by old memories."

Vincent shook his head. **I UNDERSTOOD YOU. SHE ISN'T THE EASIEST CAR TO DRIVE. NEVER WAS.** Then Sebastian's defiance died back a little, replacing itself with a pointed look for he had never heard Vincent be _realistic_ about the Testarossa's capabilities before; being a sportscar, it was a fiercer character than most others on the road, and that meant more _difficult_ to handle. But this car had been Vincent's pride and joy, he wouldn't have heard a word against it while he was still alive; another thing that had changed. They stopped at a red light. **SOMETIMES SHE FRIGHTENS ME. BUT THAT'S MY LOT TO HANDLE. DON'T WORRY ABOUT HER, WE'RE VISIBLE ON THE ROAD. NO HARM WILL COME TO US.**

Sebastian exhaled hard again in disdain. "You say that like you're sometimes _in_ visible," he said; he'd meant it in spiteful jest, and for a moment thought that it had been understood that way. But when Vincent just _looked_ at him, entirely unsmiling and with red-glowing eyes fixed upon his- "... wait, I meant... _what?_ Are you telling me that you _are?"_

** NOT NOW. THEY CAN SEE US. LOOK. **

It was true. A young male driver peered out from the car beside them, and when Vincent gestured for him to go ahead, he gave him a thumbs-up before rolling the window back up. Vincent was neither invisible nor particularly _weird_ as far as everyone around them was concerned. Sebastian witnessed all of this, though his mind took a while to catch up in its disbelief - and then slowly sank back on his seat, too stunned to even comprehend the idea that Vincent may have not needed to do any of that since he'd died.

Was that why he left no trace of his movements and the Testarossa remained so clean? Because he no longer needed a _presence?_

"You said..." he began slowly, "you said... 'not _now'_."

** I CHOSE TO BE SEEN. **

Sebastian's head was beginning to hurt. Maybe this was too high a price to pay for easy passage to some drinks and cigarettes. "How, uh... _what_...?" he mumbled. Then he drew a deep breath and covered his face with a hand. "Jesus. _Look_. You have to understand that this is hard for me to accept," he said, and took another breath to collect his thoughts. "okay, you _chose_ to be seen, that makes it sound like being _visible_ is the choice for you. Am I right? That's not your default," Vincent nodded without a word. "so are you... visible... for a _purpose?_ "

 ** OF COURSE. DRIVING WOULD BE A RATHER TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE OTHERWISE.  **  
** SHE IS A VERY PRETTY TESTAROSSA, BUT SHE IS ONLY ONE. I CRASHED ONCE. DEATH LEAVES NO TIME FOR TRIAL AND ERROR.  **

Strange, how the first thing Sebastian took out of this was a sense of _confirmation_. This wasn't surprising in itself: the Testarossa had been destroyed and witnessed in that state by all fifteen years ago, but it had been found empty. People actually _had_ debated how Vincent himself had died, back when the incident had been fresh in everyone's minds. _So he had crashed after all_ , was what he thought first, feeling oddly detached - before, and quite suddenly, the _rage_ poured in. _Death leaves no time for trial and error_ \- oh, it was easy for _Vincent_ to say that, now that he was back here and somehow immune! Never mind that Sebastian had suffered because of his friend's death, or the fact that death was still a fate that _he_ couldn't escape! It was a blunt truth, and yet from Vincent's mouth (and the combined workings of Sebastian's mind) it became such an unbelievably _tactless_ thing to say that Sebastian was quite lost for words for over a minute. It was effort even to find the words to continue, and he ended up feeling that it hadn't been worth the trouble when he _did_ say the only thing he could think of saying: "Then how is the car intact? By what _mechanism_ are you here?"

** I DON'T KNOW. **

"Not the faintest idea?"

** NO MORE THAN YOU KNOW WHY YOU WERE BORN.  **

That silenced Sebastian better than anything else could have done. They did not speak again until they reached their destination. Sebastian would have remembered this entire trip more negatively if not for one thing: Vincent was true to his word. He seemed to know where Sebastian wanted to go without being told the directions, which unnerved the man somewhat, but he didn't say or do anything else that raised alarm bells. He didn't drive like a daredevil as he used to drive down highways before, but in a careful, perhaps disappointingly plain manner, _exactly_ right for getting from A to B. When they arrived in front of the store, he let Sebastian out with only the words that that he would wait in the car, and said nothing more. He did not move from that spot for the rest of their stay.  

Sebastian was glad to be outside again, but he couldn't stop himself glancing back as he walked inside the store. Vincent was sat upright and staring straight ahead, his elbow resting against the open window of the driver's seat, ready to go again at a moment's notice. His posture was such that just looking at it made Sebastian feel hurried - it wasn't intentional, he could tell, but for some reason he was still uncomfortable at the idea of being an _inconvenience_ to Vincent.

Never mind that it was absurd to feel that way. Vincent had offered to bring him here and he'd accepted it, in exchange for some of his time; technically, this was a _transaction._  
Two large bottles of vodka, a 24-pack of Marlboro, a bottle of discounted hazelnut liqueur, and some generic red wine. He knew what he'd been looking for (save for the liqueur, curse his impulsive buying, he'd stretch that out by adding some to coffee) - he paid and was back outside in less than ten minutes, having felt just as uncomfortable, if not more so, among other people in the store as when he'd been with Vincent. This was a familiar feeling, but he especially didn't appreciate it tonight, when he already felt so out of place.

The drive back was quiet and brief. Sebastian spoke only once, in curt tones, to ask that he be taken home, when he sat down; Vincent nodded just the same and got the car back on the road. He did not look at Sebastian nor make any attempts at conversation besides occasional glances, and even then, Sebastian didn't think that those were intentional. He was just looking around as he drove, that was all - he was being _careful._

"..."

Nothing wrong with that, surely. So why the sight filled him with so much _displeasure_ was beyond him.

Sebastian sighed and shut his eyes. This needed to _end_ already.  
Not just the journey back home, but the business Vincent had come to him for, and all. But he didn't have his hopes up for that tonight - said business hadn't been discussed on the trip to the store, and now there was probably not enough time to even _describe_ what was going on.

They arrived back at Sebastian's house without incident. The moment the car was parked and settled, Sebastian pulled the door handle and let it fall open as if he wanted to leave as quickly as possible; it was only after a few seconds' pause, and the realization that Vincent hadn't tried to stop him or even tell him anything, that made him stop in his tracks. "Thank... you," he said. Vincent nodded, but remained silent. "... when you were in my house... a few days ago, you said that you _couldn't explain_ much of what happened to you."

** I DID. **

"So that can't be why you're here. What _did_ you come here to tell me, then?"

** I DON'T THINK YOU'RE READY FOR IT TONIGHT.  **

_"Vincent."_

_That_ got a reaction out of him. Vincent's mouth twitched in a shadow of his old boyish smile. **THANK YOU,** he said. Sebastian immediately felt worse for not having called him by his name properly before that point. **I PROMISE. I WILL STAY HERE UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO HEAR IT.**

Sebastian leaned in anxiously. "But what _is_ it that I need to hear? Are you here to tell me how you..." _died,_ was the word on his lips; he hesitated and switched, rather lamely, to an alternate description. "... became like this?"

Vincent shook his head. The faint glow from behind his sunglasses narrowed and Sebastian knew that he'd closed his eyes: in exasperation, exhaustion or grief, he didn't know. He didn't get the time to ask. Before he could say anything else, Vincent lifted his hand from the steering wheel and rested it gently atop Sebastian's; the latter gasped, instinctively wanting to flinch back (as was his policy with everyone, not just his zombie acquaintance), but his touch wasn't anything like what he'd expected. Vincent was cool - but not icy cold in the way the irrevocably dead were, more cool in the way a dry winter breeze was against the skin - and his limbs had a more solid pressure to them, though they weren't clammy or what Sebastian would describe as _dead weight_. The delicate way he had once curled his fingers atop Sebastian's hand had remained, as well as his gentleness. Had they held hands in the dark-

"... Vincent..."

\- as they'd done so many times, a long time ago -

 ** SLEEP WELL.  ** ** À BIENTÔT. ** ** **

There was nothing else to it, then. Vincent wasn't telling. Sebastian looked down at their hands for a moment, sighed heavily, and closed his eyes with a nod. Vincent let him go, and this time he didn't hesitate to leave, all the way from the Testarossa to the moment he shut the front door behind him.  
He locked it. Tossed away the keys. Then he closed the curtains tight, making sure that the middle bit that never seemed to close properly was covered. The darkness and isolation gave him comfort, it was only the creeping sense of unease that came from remembering the drive that forced him to turn on the lights.

Sebastian went to the kitchen and put away the goods. Strange, how his craving for alcohol had helped to get him out of the house - when now that he was back, he felt like having none of it. Fate playing a trick on him again, perhaps, who knew? - He contemplated a cigarette and decided against that, too. So he went to the sink and washed his hands, just because he always did so, especially whenever he'd been shopping. Something about bringing home what so many other people must have touched.

But it was different tonight. It wasn't other people's filth that he wanted to be rid of, more his own.  
Except that he didn't think _filth_ was the correct term for it. _Leftovers,_ more like. Something lingering. Something that had always been there and he'd never paid attention to, until Vincent had helpfully shone a torch upon the entire thing. His other hand turned the water up hotter, all the way up to scalding. He gritted his teeth for a second because the pain felt _good_ , in some blackout way that went off in his head like a gunshot; the memory of the drive was wiped clean against it, and there it would lie buried until Sebastian recovered at some other point. Hot water was a good litmus test for how much he could take.

But forget the _incident_ as he might, he could not so easily push himself towards a less maudlin mood, for a _state of mind_ was something that built up over time. It would take much more than momentary pain for that to fade away. And so, his despair made him stay up all night baking again.  
He made three single-tier cakes and iced them by dawn-light and birdsong. All but one tasted like ashes.

*****

Sebastian got to the library around two o'clock the following afternoon. He was done for the day, but Vincent wasn't; he had a few hours free yet. The librarian didn't immediately recognize the name of the play, but a quick search cleared that up; he asked Sebastian to wait and soon returned with a _hefty_ volume, a thick white hardback with a fraying dust jacket and hundreds of pages, before asking him if he wanted to borrow it.

A quick examination revealed that this was the full collection of the poems and plays of T. S. Eliot. He took it out and sat outside by the benches, wanting to enjoy the sun as he read. _Murder in the Cathedral_ turned out to occupy less than fifty pages total in the book, just past the halfway point, so he flicked his thumb along the pages until he found roughly the right spot - and looked.

 _You know and do not know, that acting is suffering,_  
_And suffering action. Neither does the agent suffer_  
_Nor the patient act._

He read it again. Then a third time. He wasn't properly at the beginning but he had no urge to turn back for a proper start. He turned pages quickly with one hand, skimming initially then slowing as a kind of desperate intensity took over, eyes drifting to parts of the text and lingering there for minutes at a time before he forced himself to pull away. This was a drama in verse and when it came to verses he much preferred it in any other language than English, not having become accustomed to its inherent rhythm yet - trying to read along to _beats_ or _accentuated syllables_ felt awkward for him, if not downright silly.

But this was anything but that...

 _This is one moment,_  
_But know that another_  
_Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy._

The minutes and hours ticked past. A few metres away, patrons began to trickle out of the library with more frequency than they ventured in. Sebastian did not move from his seat. He remained there and read the play all the way through, only moving when the sunlight tickled at his face; when he was done, he went right back to the beginning and started to read it all over again, not even allowing himself the time to think it over. There was a difference between the kind of words that prompted reflection and the kind that one devoured with haste. Sometimes a text encompassed both sorts of feeling and _Murder in the Cathedral_ was rapidly proving itself to be one of those, but either way, the _consumption_ came first. Only when he was done with his second read-through did the question occur to him:

Why _had_ Vincent suggested that he read this?

It was a beautiful play, no doubt. In some primordial way, Sebastian did not wish to let go of it. By that he meant that he wished to accept it as it was; none of his usual conflict about translations, or how English verse sounded to his ears. He wondered, just briefly, where _Vincent_ had discovered it. He had a vague hunch, but as he was staring down at the cover of the book the Testarossa pulled up a few steps away, and he was pulled away from his thoughts for the few seconds it took him to pack up and rush over to the car. "Vincent! You finished early as well?"

"Sure did. Hop in."

That was second nature to Sebastian by this point. He climbed in, shut the door, and buckled himself in, all mostly with one hand. Vincent smiled brightly when he saw Sebastian carrying the book - he seemed to recognize that it had been read, too, by the look in the younger boy's eyes. Not minutes after they left the school grounds, the latter's suspicions were proved correct as well: the drama club had been responsible for Vincent's knowledge of the play. "It's the first thing Noel showed us all, actually," he added as he shuffled quickly through his CD selection; he found nothing to his liking, and zipped up the case again. "when the drama club was trying to decide on their play last year, that's where I met him first. _That_ -" here he pointed to the book on Sebastian's lap. "- was one of the options he suggested. That or _Doctor Faustus_. You okay with the radio for today?"

"Sure," Vincent twisted the dial, settling on the first music station that came up. The last strands of what might have been smooth jazz were fading away. "and knowing what _he's_ like... I don't imagine either of those went over well?"

The traffic lights changed to orange and then green, and they were off again. A new song began on the radio; Vincent turned up the volume for a few seconds to check what it was, smiled, then turned it back down so that they could talk. "You're not kidding. The principal was horrified. We did go with _Doctor Faustus_ in the end... something about it sounding nicer, or at least being old enough to be harmless. Couldn't have disagreed more, but it was great fun. If you haven't read it yet, do check it out."

Sebastian _had_ read _Doctor Faustus_ , but he took the opportunity to ask something more immediate in his interests. "Why did you recommend this instead of the Marlowe?"

The older boy gave him a sideways glance, bright-eyed but bemused as if to ask: _haven't you figured it out yet?_ It was a look that made Sebastian think quickly back to everything that had happened between him that day and the one before, figuring that whatever he was meant to understand was in _there_ somewhere. "It helped me. I thought it might help you."

That was all that was said. Sebastian waited for a further explanation but none came. It was down to him to figure out the other's intentions, then. It would be more satisfying that way than if he pleaded with the older boy for an answer, certainly, though he _did_ find himself a little wanting. Quietness settled over them, and with that, it was the song on the radio that took over the silence.

 _"You were meant for me,_  
_and I was meant for you._  
_Nature patterned you, and when she was done,_  
_you were all the sweet things rolled up in one!"_

Sebastian glanced over, suddenly interested. He thought he might have heard it somewhere before, if not the song, then the delectable tenor singing it. _Fred Astaire?_ he thought, but that couldn't be right. This voice was smokier in tone than Astaire's, if that made any sense at all.

 _"You're like a plaintive melody,_  
_that never lets me free..."_

 _"... But I'm content the angels must have sent you_ ," Sebastian gasped slightly at that point as Vincent's gentle voice overlapped with the song; the older boy's hand came to a rest by the volume dial, twisting it to turn up the sound. " _and they meant you just for me_."

Vincent then winked at him. "Good song, huh?"

"... What's it called?"

"'You Were Meant For Me'. Might be Gene Kelly here," he fell silent for a moment. "... yeah. It is. I recognize the instrumental. Do you like musicals, Bastien?"

"I'm not sure what I think of them."

Well, that was the most neutral he could be about them. Musicals from the mid-seventies onwards, he had a secret and almost shameful love of (though he thought Vincent wouldn't mind), but his interest dropped abruptly with anything that had come before. So it was true that he didn't know what to think about musicals as a time-independent genre. "I should show you the one this comes from," Vincent said, gesturing towards the stereo. "fifties musicals aren't really my thing either, but _Singin' in the Rain_ is always an exception. I watched that maybe two hundred times or more from when I was... six? Seven, maybe? So if anything, you'd know the kind of thing little me was charmed by."

Sebastian chuckled at the thought of a tiny Vincent - what a mismatched, but utterly necessary concept! "Sounds like it'd be fun."

"Oh yes. It's _very_ funny. Ridiculously American, completely over the top, and so, _so_ sweet. _Everyone_ could do with watching it at some point."

He took Vincent's word for it. The song came to an end, replaced with more radio chatter, though neither of them had to sit through much of it before they reached Sebastian's house. Again, there was no car in the parking space, which allowed the Testarossa to come to a smooth stop mere footsteps away from the front door. "I can't stay long today," Vincent said apologetically as he parked the car. "Mom wants me to come and help her out at the shop, she did say I could come along at any time but I don't want to keep her waiting, you know?"

"Vincent, out of everything that I could possibly mind, that one's very low down on the list. _I_ wouldn't want to make Maman wait if I was needed, either. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"I have stuff to do in town, but I can pick you up any time from five to six. You?"

"I'll be at the library."

"Excellent. See you tomorrow, Bastien."

Sebastian watched the Testarossa pull out and waved Vincent off as he left; the other stuck his arm out of the rolled-down window and waved right back, lazy and carefree as if he didn't have several other concerns in his mind. The house key jangled softly in his bag as Sebastian turned, looking at the front door, but he didn't go in just yet. Instead, he took a seat on the front lawn, the grass soft and pale-green beneath him from having grown fresh not too long ago. The sun was still out and the breeze was nice - he had time to puzzle over the question Vincent had posed him.

He rested the satchel on his knees and opened the book on top of it. One particular passage had caught his eye a while ago; he flicked to it, noting the line about the 'sudden, painful joy' and looking a few more lines down.

 _When age and forgetfulness sweeten memory_  
_Daily like a dream that has often been told_  
_And often been changed in the telling._ _They will seem unreal._  
_Humankind cannot bear very much reality._

Sebastian read it twice over and mulled over the words.  
He thought he recognized what Vincent had been alluding to. He hadn't been able to open up to Vincent properly the day before, he'd told himself, because he hadn't wanted to trouble the other boy with the details; he'd wanted to hide one moment yet had overshared the next, he wasn't the best at communicating, and he'd feared he would drive Vincent away. But that was a false understanding. Sebastian didn't know about the _sweetened memories_ \- he couldn't decide whether the good experiences he'd had before he'd come to the States were sweet to him, or else torture, most of the time - but _unreality_ was familiar to him. Of _course_ the details were important. Months and years of longing to return, or at least to see home just one last time, if he was fated to become a stranger to his motherland forever; spending just as long never knowing which home to choose, because he couldn't seem to have both; and all the while, of course, enduring mixed pity and disdain from others in a country where everything was at once too much and too little and the riotous sun set on the righteous. _That was his life_. It became unquestionably better the longer he lived here, but at the expense of being able to understand what had come before - to the point where he remembered every instance of obnoxious abuse he and his mother had received whilst here, and didn't even know how to describe it nor what to feel about it.

Nothing about that was normal, down to his forced indifference.  
Maybe he was afraid that Vincent would pity him, or that he would find his own experiences unexpectedly distressing (too _real_ ) if he talked about them at length. He didn't know, but that wasn't so important as the fact that Vincent had _seen through him_. Not in that he'd understood the exact pains Sebastian had gone through - at best, he could have only guessed at those - but simply in the sense that he recognized that Sebastian's life had been difficult. No one had accepted that at face value before.

_Humankind cannot bear very much reality._

He murmured that to himself, closed the volume again, and looked up at the sky. _That_ was real. So were his two hands, pale and (he thought) waifish against the cover. His new friend had settled rather comfortably into his daily life over the past few weeks, too, he no longer felt that Vincent was the product of a mere dream. That was because he'd gotten used to him being around, Sebastian supposed for all of a minute, before he shifted his attention to the uncomfortable realization lurking in the fringes of his mind: that there existed things in the world that one could never _get used to,_ not for the lack of frequent occurrences, the language to express them, or the amount of people who could feel them.

The guilt expected of him, for being half-Serbian, was one of those things.  
Another was his overall situation. He often felt as if he wasn't living here at all, as if none of this was actually happening.  
He hadn't _gotten used to_ those things. He hadn't really accepted the reality of those things, either. He'd just developed ways to _cope_ with them, that was all. If he'd truly accepted that those things were to happen to him, his indifference towards them would have been a natural response, not _forced_ out of the fear that he'd end up making his own life difficult otherwise.

Real or unreal; familiar or unfamiliar; accepted or rejected. These seemed to be the binaries suggested by the text.

But they weren't _tied_. One negative binary didn't have to result in all of the others becoming so. One could get used to what was unreal, and accept it as it was: that was what childlike fantasies were all about, and it was also the essential nature of fiction, like all the books he read. He didn't regard Vincent as a dream anymore, not because he'd become familiar to his presence, but simply because he had accepted the other boy's reality. Those were different things. One could get used to such things as chronic pain or hallucinations without accepting that this was just how things were, to take one example, and one could accept another person's reality and still be surprised by them on a daily basis, as Vincent did for him. It struck Sebastian then that he had always been happiest when he could get away from his daily life - when he was _alone_ , crafting his own language or working on his music, lost in a world of his own reality and familiarity that he didn't need to share with anyone else. Maybe that was the same for a lot of people, but he had the additional penalty of _survival_ to his being; he wasn't doing that because he wanted to feel happy, but because he needed to draw clear lines in the sand as to what he could and couldn't acknowledge if he wanted to carry on living.

He would have lost his mind otherwise.

Sebastian stroked over the book's spine, thinking. Forget _literature lessons_ , he considered himself an in-depth reader but even he couldn't always get so much out of a single sentence from a single work. He wasn't familiar with any of Eliot's work, but his impression was that he wrote in a language bold and earthy, unafraid to depict things as they were. He cracked open the book again and skimmed down the lines for examples backing up his hypothesis:  
  
_Spring has come in winter. Snow in the branches_  
_Shall float as sweet as blossoms. Ice along the ditches_  
_Mirror the sunlight. Love in the orchard_  
_Send the sap shooting. Mirth matches melancholy._

That would do. Sebastian liked that. A beautiful, symmetrical, and unbelievably bold passage. It seemed to be something he could always keep in mind, as he knew that a tough language befitted a tough life - a language powerful enough to demonstrate how it could be so. He'd had to rely on his own instincts to find examples of powerful language before, in all the literature and translations that he'd previously fallen upon in fits of voracious appetite - or otherwise lean upon its pale impersonator, _silence._ Of the way his life was, he could simply say that it could not be doubted before moving on, and had had to do so many times before. It had been easier than trying to make other people understand.

Sebastian Akchoté had never _stopped_ feeling things. Not even for a second.  
But he'd stopped expressing it, because he'd known what would happen.

But as for his friend?

*****

(What had he been to Vincent?)

*****

(Who had Vincent been to _him_?)

*****

Vincent had seen that _something_ in Sebastian lay empty with a longing to be filled, and he'd communicated that understanding through this unfamiliar and sublime play, offering neither replacement nor advice but his compassion. _It helped me_ , Vincent had said, that was his justification. But the feelings this text stirred in him were not guaranteed to be the same ones that Vincent had wanted for him - how could that be, unless Vincent was a reader of minds?

The answer came quicker for him this time. He didn't know if that had been the intent, but: he was sure that Vincent wanted him to comment. Through the medium of fiction, Vincent was telling him that he wanted Sebastian to _talk to him,_ about the parts in the play that had hit home for him (for it wasn't a guarantee that he and Vincent had been moved by the same passages), his overall opinions on the work, or whether it had even helped at all. And if they had a conversation about the latter, it would mean that he would be opening up to Vincent about _something_ \- his life, his literary preferences, his personal opinions on T. S. Eliot, it didn't matter. Veiled truths or bold opinions, it didn't matter. Vincent was telling him that he'd accept it all.

To help Sebastian bear the weight of unacceptable reality, Vincent had pointed him the way back towards dreaming, and had offered to accompany him on the journey. He did not pry. He did not offer empty consolations, lest he lie to Sebastian and end up pushing him away. It was, frankly, astonishing to Sebastian that Vincent could be so delicate - yes, that was the right word, this was beyond considerate and into the realm of downright clairvoyance. Because of this, Sebastian was more convinced then ever that they'd both experienced similar things, and even though he was shivering with halfway dread by this point, the other half of him was utterly ecstatic that that meant they were equals.

Yes, he could talk to Vincent. He was even _well-qualified_ to do so. And all from a play by Eliot!  
_I feel you, Sebastian,_ Vincent's image seemed to murmur in his ear, tickling down the back of his neck, _I understand you, Sebastian, talk to me, we are the same_. Sebastian could barely breathe with joy.

Part of him felt a little guilty about that. It seemed cruel to rejoice in a pain only because it was a _shared_ one. But his curiosity had a stronger hold over him, and just thinking about Vincent made something inside him sing with such paradisal warmth that he wanted _more_ , to know and follow and learn as much as he could. For once, Sebastian didn't feel that he was being pitied, only regarded with a gentle human concern. Many things had pained him for the past three years, and though he wasn't sure just how much of it he could divulge to Vincent, for him alone he wanted to make an effort.

Yet he did not burn for Vincent. This feeling, he would not have called _love_ or even a very close _friendship_. No, what he felt was rather closer to _correctness_ , the mind's ataraxic lull, a feeling he thought he had lost a long time ago. When he brushed his thumb over where his heart lay, it was Vincent's fingertip he felt in its stead, the other's low laugh and gentle grace playing tremolo over his skin. Vincent was beyond description and exactly what Sebastian believed him to be all at once: _words_ held him together, the words for things and thoughts and feelings, and yet he lived and breathed and comforted Sebastian in the spaces of all that was unsaid.

Vincent was already his everything. He wondered if he knew.

Sebastian closed his eyes.  
He leaned back until the satchel rolled off his lap and he fell back soundlessly onto the lawn, only the book still clutched tight to his chest.  
The smell of springtime raw and green filled his head and a pleasant dizziness accompanied it, but he did not move nor look around, even as the clouds peeled back and the afternoon sun tickled over his eyelids. Its light danced softly against his own shuteyed void, gold framing absolute darkness, utterly illuminated before the world.

If he actually _looked_ at the sun, his eyes would be the focus of its light, and all of its charm would be lost. Too bright, too harsh, too painful.  
As long as Sebastian simply knew that it was there, keeping the rest of him bathed evenly in it, he was at the centre of the world. Under the spotlight, or showered in _headlights_ , even, all of him exposed to those who were seeking him.

And for once in his life, he wanted to be found.

*****

He was there for a long time. His mother came home to him half buried in the grass, lips closed in a serene curve, lying still as if he were dead.

_But I'm content the angels must have sent you..._

Sebastian's heart had never beat so fiercely in his chest before.

_... and they meant you... just for me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a horribly long time not because I was busy, necessarily, but because my attention was taken up by a new writing project I began in July. @akchotesuggestion (on tumblr) has grown in leaps and bounds since I began it, but in the back of my mind I've been thinking about this fic for a long time.  
> The few months of letting it mature has helped to steer this fic into directions I hadn't considered before. The theological discussion was one of the added features, because I think the discussion of faith is very important for this story. Not in a religious context, but the _concept_ of having faith - choosing to believe the unbelievable, or to deal with the impossible, even when all the facts point otherwise. I think there is a lot we can get out of understanding why this rather bizarre attitude persists in the human consciousness, not to mention the times when faith helps.
> 
> Sebastian will need a lot of it for the rest of _Swansong_.
> 
> * @gavingruchy aided me with the translation of the Vincent-Juanita dialogue months ago! I have only managed to make proper use of and publish it now, but rest assured that I never forgot. The English version I asked to be translated goes something a bit like this: _"Juanita, darling, dearest, loveliest girl, I've always thought you loved a little naughtiness-" /_  
>  "- 'Dearest', that's rich, as if I've never heard that before-" / "- but if milady wishes then I won't do it again, cross my heart and kiss my elbow-" / "- you leave me alone, Vinco, go rub your filthy face somewhere else, maybe your car if you love it so much -"  
> * The Detour Festival schedule as retold in _Swansong_ is based off the actual schedule, linked [here](https://s30.postimg.org/gmixpplsh/2016_12_13_024128.png), that was used when Sebastian, Kavinsky, Justice, etc. actually were part of Detour in 2007.  
>  * I might one day talk about what happened to Xavier, though it isn't massively important for this fic.  
> * [Here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/mihjorlv7va81u6/T.%20S.%20Eliot%20-%20Murder%20in%20the%20Cathedral.pdf) is the text of _Murder in the Cathedral_ for reference. It is difficult to find in non-print form even nowadays. It's not the longest play - you want to focus on pgs 247 and 271.  
>  * The song playing on the radio is 'You Were Meant For Me' by Gene Kelly, listenable/watchable in full context [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqsrVQfNYPc). I really recommend watching the full musical too!
> 
> Please comment or give me a shout in [my tumblr inbox](http://kimbk.tumblr.com/inbox) if you liked it! Reviews keep me going strong <333


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